The Secret War of Cloud Strife
by Lyle Sammie
Summary: A novellization told in first person view. Rated M for language, some crude dialogue, and scenes of strong violence. Some AU elements. CloudxAerith. Chapter Three up.
1. Chapter 1

**DISCLAIMER**-- No affiliation with SquareEnix or the company's publishers resides with me. I am just a simple college student interested in perfecting my English Composition skills. Final Fantasy VII is possibly the greatest game I think I have ever played. I hope you all enjoy this story. Thank you.

**CHAPTER ONE**

Someone once told me that if I didn't quit smoking my lungs would blacken to beyond degradation. After this was done, I would collapse into a pool of my own blood and be lost to the twilights of time.

Well, that sounds a bit too drastically exaggerated for me to handle. Unfortunately, the sad truth is is that I do smoke an incredible amount of tobacco. It's not always tobacco, I mean there's tons more shit out there than just simple tobacco. Man, here in Midgar you can find just about anything from marijuana to black gum to a totally mind-wrenching bloody samurai ( that last one is a red mixture of the other two and God-knows-what-else). SOLDIER taught me a lot about all that stuff; yet, I don't presume that that wonderful imagery of my death would ever happen to me. No one dies anymore on this planet due to lung cancer. There are other cancers much more horrible and sickening than lung cancer to worry about. Besides, I've got way too much shit on my plate at this very moment than stewing over some dumbass thing such as lung cancer. Come to think of it, I'm on a train right now snaking its path through the inner subways of Lower Midgar at this very second.

There's four others with me, by the way; they're not the brighest people alive, either. The girl, though, is brighter than the other three I'll give her that much. Her name's Jessie. She could be a totally hot woman what with that fiery red hair and voluptous cream skin, but she's got her mind on other things. Engineering things more or less, especially bomb-making. She says she got a Bachelor's degree or something, but she doesn't talk about that much. Anyways, she makes the bombs. Biggs, the Steven Segal wannabe, usually secures the bombs into whatever it is these guys like to detonate.

Detonate? Yeah. I got dragged into this little organization called Avalanche, which happens to be a pretty big underground type of thing stretching maybe even outside the metropolis. Avalanche has a real bit of anger towards a corporation that I used to work for. Now I know what you're thinking: why am I here? In short, I was in the military some five years to this date. I advanced rather quickly, because a massacre of a war was taking place devastating the entire land from one side of the ocean to the other. Midgar eventually won the fight against the lesser of the two evils, Wutai, and the brass of the military appointed me and two others as high-tier officers. These positions were known as the famous SOLDIER First Class ranks, which really meant alot to the holders and the citizens alike.

The President of Midgar, (who is still in power) Shinra, screwed over the entire planet. That's being overly broad, but suffice it to say, that was the end result. He set up gigantic nuclear reactors around the city, in which these reactors inevitably polluted the atmosphere and made the lower regions of the city darkened and malnourished. The realm of Lower Midgar fell to slums and gang warfare. Death and sickness flourished. The eight reactors separated the city even more than it already was. Upper Midgar was still as rich and exquisite as it ever was.

Now a good question is this: why would the President let his own city fall to the terrible state it is in right now, and why doesn't he do something about it? All things considered, the President is the richest man in the land. Those two questions, along with another more tragic event, eventually led me to cut myself off from the military and Shinra's control forever. That move made me a wanted man, and I've had countless assassination attempts on me that have each failed. The land was changing, I quickly saw, and as always things look their bleakest when times are changing. Fortunately, the Lord that watches over us relieved my troubles in the form of Barret Wallace and his ragtag team of followers.

Mr Wallace is the self-proclaimed leader of the Avalanche organization, one of the few organizations that oppose Shinra and his corportation. Other oraganizations that come to mind are the Save the Earth Federation, Peace Prosper, and some funky ragtag group called the Warriors. Avalanche, though, has been the only oraganization to strike big with a great slew of successful arson attacks against some of Shinra's corporation buildings. Barret is very proud of the organization; as such, he still does not appreciate my presence in his gang, even though I've thrown every known history of my SOLDIER background in the gutter. The stubborn black fool with muscles as big as fucking watermelons still disapproves of me. Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge ( the last of the four weanies on this train with me) eventually coaxed Mr. Muscles to let me in. I guess they liked me or something.

Oh, an interesting thing about Muscle Guy: he's missing an arm. Aint that something? In its place, Wallace has grafted a machine gun. Not just any regular machine gun, though. A fucking M60, action reload machine gun. This Terminator of a man is able to life the seventy pound death weapon like it was a simple piece of paper and fire it without even flinching. With all that talent he would've made an excellent member of SOLDIER First Class.

So, here I am on this train, twiddling my thumbs, and staring at my fellow cohorts: Jessie, the tomboyish bombmaker who has the potential to be a totally hot glam chick; Biggs, the infiltrator and bombplacer who needs to grow some cojones and start acting like an actual man; Wedge, our sniper and food-lover who needs to get over Sheila ( even though the corporate businessman was way better looking than this pudgester); and Mr. Muscles, who with his gunarm just loaded on any bad person that came into his sights. Since they all knew of my background, they delegated my job to be an assistant to Wallace-- meaning I get to fuck shit up, too. Awesome.

The train was approaching Sector One's depot, and that was our destination. One of them at least. I wanted a cigarette badly, but I had left the damn package in my bedroom back at the hideout. Damn my luck, I was going to be antzy all night now. Just fucking great.

All of a sudden, I heard a heavy thumping noise reverberating along the carpeted aisle of the train cab. A heavy voice came along with it. "Cloud's your name, right? Cloud Strife?"

Strife. God, I hated that last name. Damn my mother and father. "Yeah, what do you want, B.W.?"

"That's Wallace to you, dipshit." Ah, Barret was always a cheerful person to be around. Especially with that humongous cigar sunk against his lower lip. He eyed me with displeasure. "Get that goddamn sword of yours and take care of those two guards at the security checkpoint."

"What you mean you want to kill people already."

"These aren't people! These are government robots."

"What are government robots?"

"Hence the term robots, they're fucking mechanical structures."

Okay. "Wait. Why don't you just blast them?"

"I'm assigning your ass to do it. Plans have changed some what. You and me are going in to the Core Room, and the other three are staying on the outside providing whatever mangled defense they can provide."

Well... this sounded like a load of shit. I leaned back and stretched out my muscles. They had been feeling rather sore since I woke up this morning. A little bit of weed would take care of that when we came home. As I stood up, I looked out the window. We had entered the train station; due to the fact that it was about three in the morning there wasn't a soul on this particular train besides us. Very convenient. I could see the two robots Barret was talking about-- their sleek, metallic coating was very familiar to me. Images of SOLDIER flickered through my head as I walked towards the door. The train's brakes screeched to a halt, and the hydraulics system unlocked the doors. I was wearing an oversized raincoat (black as usual), and I stepped off the train.

The subway contained its usual gritty smell that reminded of leftover piss floating around the bottom of a urinal. Drunken men lay passed out or stoned out against the walls, as if they were somebody's fucking rag doll just thrown into the corner of a bedroom. What a sickening sight. I was used to the upper crust of the city, not Midgar's teeming slum life. I would much rather have put a Glock to my head and pulled the trigger than be forced to live in this godawful pigsty. What a fucking mess.

The two robots saw my departure and uttered some incomprehensible shout. One carried a MP5 submachine gun and seemed to portray a human emotion of wariness in my movements. Shinra was making his toys more realistic by the day, it seemed. I walked over to their booth and placed my right hand on the pad. These things had to check each train passenger's fingerprints in order to keep the general public in a safe environment. The security checkpoint had a whole inventory of every human being listed in Midgar; the robots would know that my background would not fit a typical commoner of the Lower Midgar society.

As if on cue, the seated robot looked at my face, and the armed robot inched a little closer. In perfect English, the seated robot asked me, "Might I inquire your name, sir?"

Most people hated the robots yet always had a certain immobilizing fear of them (albeit the group Avalanche). I never really understood that. These were just a bunch of simple machines. My eyes remained focused and aware; my speech was clear and calm. "Fitzgerald."

"First name?"

"Daniel."

"Mr. Daniel Fitzgerald, where are you coming from?"

"Upper Midgar; Sector Five; Calhoun's Weapon Shoppe."

"And where are you going to?"

"Lower Midgar; Sector One; the Traversinco Plaza."

"And for what purpose?"

"To consult with my clients a certain, unpaid debt that they owe to my clients in Junon. The matter is urgent."

"And how do you plan to... consult them?"

"That is my matter."

The seated robot was silent, thinking. The armed robot seemed ready to do its thing. The seated robot stared a few times at me and at the computer. A couple times it clicked keys on some objects on the monitor and gave a grunt of disgust.

"Sir... my computer shows that there is no man with the name of Fitzgerald working at any place in the Sector Five district in Upper Midgar."

"Well your computer is wrong, dear robot."

The robot made a noise that sounded like a smoker's laugh. "No, Mr. Somebody, I'm afraid you're wrong."

A shotgun blast ripped through the roof and splintered the torso of the armed robot into shreds. The MP5 flew out of its hands, and its mangled body fell everywhere. The seated robot cowered in fear, as my left hand pulled out the smoking barrel of my sawed-off shotgun from within my raincoat. With my right hand, I reached behind me to my back and pulled out my four-foot Buster sword from its scabbard and sliced off the robot's head.

Now that I knew my actions had been caught on videotape, the mission seemed to have gotten a whole lot better. What fun. I went back to the train, peeked my head in, and hollered out, "Coast clear."

"God! Finally," shouted the voice of Biggs. His ugly-ass bandana waved around his pixieness of a head, as he jumped off the train and ran to the back of the station. Wedge came next carrying a big sniper rifle. He had perspiration glistening on his forehead, and his face seemed tense. Jessie was close behind him carrying a couple of pistols and a heavy-laden pouch of stuff. She gave me a flirting look that didn't seem appropriate given the conditions we were under. Finally, Barret came out with a small box in his only hand. "The bomb's in here, spiky hair. Next time, can you be a little quieter and not use that fucking gun of yours. That's louder than my gun."

"I like fighting a little army every once in a while."

A hint of disgust smeared his face, and Barret faced me. "Look, kid. This aint the military no more. This is a mission to bomb the military, bomb the Corporation, and bomb Shinra's pawns. You copy that?"

"Alright, father. You done lecturing me now."

He blew a billow of smoke into my face and left the train. Biggs could be heard laughing hysterically and holding something. "By God, I've always wanted one of these." He was holding up the fallen robot's MP5. "It's mine now."

"Shut your trap," Barret grunted. "What with Cloud's racket, it won't benefit us any more better than to have you masterbating here. Get your dick over to the south side like we planned."

Biggs took another gleeful eye at the gun before holstering it and running out the station down the cobblestone street. His part of the mission was to secure the southern gates of the Sector One reactor. A fairly small MP unit had a guardhouse there, and he was going to destabilize that. Pretty simple, but ol Rambo probably'd make an ass out of himself over it. One thing had to be done first, though. Past the small guardhouse stood a wide arena before the main entrance to the nuclear reactor. The main entrance was locked with a special code that was only accessible by deactivating it in a guard tower erected high above it. The loft the guard tower stood on was eight stories tall and barely accessible by man. The police at the guardhouse made sure nobody could get access to the power plant unless they were employees with Shinra backgrounds. Wedge had the first hand of the operation. He would scale an apartment complex that lay across the guard loft, and he would find a suitable spot on the rooftop under cover of darkness. Focusing in just right, he would fire upon the switch and destroy its mechanisms, allowing the main entrance to the reactor to become automatically accessible. Of course, the shots from the sniper rifle will alert the police, but that's where Biggs would come in.

Jessie looked uncomfortable but eager enough to carry out her part of the mission. That pouch apparantly contained a whole bunch of decoding stuff to unlock specialty doors within the reactor complex. Her job was easy, but that's pretty typical for the girl to do in my opinion.

As for myself and B.W. we got to stick our hides into the fire and save everybody else. What fun.

Wedge and Biggs were off in the darkness. Few streetlights shone in this part of the slums, and the whole world around here was as dead as a tomb. I expelled the spent shell from my shotgun and loaded another in. This piece of a weapon proved invaluable to me in the war. The sword was only a secondary tool. Don't get me wrong, I love the damn thing, but guns just interest me more. There's just something cool about them, something that strikes me as awesome. Can't go wrong with the sword, though. Nosiree.

Barret was off into the dark, and Jessie and I followed. The three of us moved quietly down the cobblestone road. At this time of night, there usually wasn't a cop around it or a robot or anything else for that matter. All the bums were asleep on someone's doorstep, all the whores were in somebody's bed, and every half-way decent person was deep in slumber. The only people up and about were us and a few lousy policemen. Or so I hoped.

A large lighted area of Sector One appeared, and an annoying neon display in bright green read: POLICE. A glass window revealed three sleepy-eyed officers watching camera monitors of the reactor. These guys looked easy. We lay in the shadows a few hundred yards from their post. I figure that Biggs should be a little closer on the other side.

"I hope that fat bastard knows how to fire a rifle, " Barret griped.

On cue, a tremendous noise ripped the tranquil night apart, and a second noise sounded immediately afterwards. The second sounded like a cracking noise. The rifle had hit its mark.

"I guess he does," I said.

"Lucky shot."

The police jumped out of their chairs and ran outside the guardhouse shouting obscenities. Before they could check the damage out, a second volley of sounds ripped apart the sky again, and their bodies tore apart in spatters of red. They hit the ground and did not move. Biggs appeared out of the darkness, blowing the smoke out of his stolen MP5. "Now that's a bitchin' gun," he said, smiling.

We made our way into the arena. The plan was going perfectly now. Lots of noise and blood splattering everywhere. Yeah, that's some good shit right there. I stole a peek at the guard loft. A trail of smoke was eschewing out of the top. A fucking direct hit that was. Glancing at the main entrance, I could see sparks zigzagging across it. Sure enough, the door was forcibly unlocked.

Barret cleared his throat. "Wedge'll join us later, hopefully. Get ready, fools, we're going in." He gave a kick at the door, and it fell open. Almost immediately, a warning shot zipped out at us missing Jessie's face by inches. Loud, distorted voices came from within followed by more gunshots. Biggs got shot in the arm, and my big spiky hair got split apart as we ducked inside. We were in a lobby room, and there was about twenty armed employees and policemen here firing like bats out of fucking hell on us. I pulled Jessie close to me and ducked both of us behind a large plush sofa. Barret and Biggs ducked behind a long wall; the latter fell behind B.W. and clutched his bleeding arm hard. A whole mess of bullets blanketed the walls, ceiling, floor, and our crappy sofa. Some of the bullets bled through the fabric and zipped past Jessie's head and mine. The attackers were at the far end of the lobby room, some behind their own sofas and others crowded on the stairs leading down towards the reactor's bowels. Clutching the shotgun in one hand, I found a mark and shot a man on the stairs. His body hit the wall and lay still. I gritted my teeth and expelled the shell. The only problem with this dang blasted gun was that it could contain one shell at any given time. At this point of time, that was a pain in the ass.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Barret unleashing hell with his weapon. His M60 was loud and rambunctious. He devastated the far end sofa and tore apart the seven bodies behind it. Apparantly the guys on the stairs didn't like that, and one of them maneuvered just right and shot Barret's right side. The force of the shot drove him to the ground, and a squirt of blood poured out of him. I had the shell in, and I lept up and fired that guard on the stairs in the face. Good stuff.

"I'll cover for you," Jessie piped up, barely audible above the din.

"What?"

"Slash them up. I'll cover for you." Without a response, she manuevered and shot her dual pistols at the knees of several of the guys on the stairs. They lost their balances and fell to the ground. Girl power. Twirling the gun into my holster, I brandished my sword and stood up. Running from cover to cover in the lobby room, I evaded the attacker's shots. When I got into range, I leapt and slashed their chests apart one by one without them able to fire back.

The room was now quiet. But a little more unpleasant than it was before.

"Aw fuck! That was not part of the plan," Barret griped.

"Stop bitchin, I'm hurt, too," Biggs said. "I'm gonna need stitches."

The once peaceful lobby room now looked like a butcher's meat locker with all the dead hanging like discarded puppets on the rail of the stairs. Violence was so cool sometimes.

The two men got up wincing like little babies, and Jessie went over to them and pulled something out of her pouch. It looked like some plastic vial thingy with a mesh of liquid inside it. They looked at it suspiciously.

"It's a Potion, a health boost drink," she said. "Down it, and your wounds will heal more faster and cleaner."

Biggs gulped his portion; Barret, as usual, was skeptical. "How can a drink heal wounds?"

"It cauterizes the wound by heating up your blood. Oxidants within your bloodstream react and form a chain of molecules that work like improvised platelets in your skin; that, in turn, heals your cuts and makes your skin stronger."

Barret shrugged like an idiot and downed his portion. Screwing up his face, he griped again, "Man, that tastes like piss."

She sighed, "It's going to help you. Look, it's already starting to work." Indeed it was, for on Barret's dark black skin the wound was slowly closing up, the blood throughly drying.

He shrugged again. "I don't care much about biology or anatomy. Right now, the core is below us, and that is where we need to go." He was off with the last word, heading for the stairs. Biggs followed, repeatedly checking on his rapidly healing wound as well.

Jessie looked at me, and her eyes were very weird in this light. The light was dim now since the hail of bullets and the spatter of blood had caked everything up. Yet, her eyes seemed to suggest something. I think she was digging me or something. She snug her pouch back on her shoulder and left after the other two, and I was alone in the meat locker. Now it was feeling kind of eerie in here with all the goddamn dead around. No proper burials for these guys; these chumps died in vain. Fortunately, a ray of light saved the day for me.

There was a vending machine over on that wall.

And there was cigarettes!

I gotta stop having these urges I tell you. But since that's impossible... I mosied on over to the machine and plunked in three gil coins into the slot. Hmm... three brands that suck: Vintage Lights, Midgar Blues, and Camel. I guess beggars can't be choosers. I selected a Vintage pack and picked it out of its confinement and turned around.

A big maroon object disappeared into a shaft on the ceiling. It looked like a tail, a smaller part of a much bigger piece of something.

I almost dropped my pack when I saw it. What in the world was that thing? I pulled out my shotgun and walked slowly towards that shaft and peered inside. Nothing but blackness and dry air seeping out of it. Man, I must've really been craving these cigs if I'm hallucinating giant tails crawling around on walls and ceilings. That's kind of weird. I placed a brown cigarette to my lips, lit the tip, blew a brilliant steam of smoke, and descended the blood-splattered stairs to the core. The air felt much more colder down here. I also had a bad feeling that that giant tail thingy was down here as well.

Jessie was punching in some secret code or something when I got to the bottom of the stairs. Damn, that was about nine flights or something like that. I had to go three damn cigarettes before I reached the end. Life is tough sometimes. A positive-sounding noise emitted from the screen, and a hydraulics system whirred and whined. The door slid open revealing an empty room with an elevator at the back end. Pipes and valves lined both sides of the walls, and the ceiling and floor were grated. The room looked depressing.

"Biggs, stand guard here," B. W. ordered.

"Is this a reasonable location?" he asked checking the whole wide expanse around him. The room we were in was incredibly vast and dark, lit only by a few neon wall lights that resembled the rooms of a morgue. Creepy shit.

"It should be. You're pretty good with that AK or whatever that gun is. Just be aware of what's around, and don't fall asleep this time."

"Wilco, Sarge."

Barret rolled his eyes and entered the room with Jessie behind him. I took another look at the vast room trying to find any other signs of that damn tail. You know, it would probably have benefited us all to tell them what I saw back in the lobby. That would be a wise thing to do... but whoever said I was a wise person. I saluted Biggs and followed the other two.

You could drop a pin in this room, and its contact with the floor would emit the most deafening noise you ever heard before in your life. Our footsteps were excruciating; it was as if the room were some hollow oak log or some dank cave where your echoes could go on forever and ever. The pipes were all moist, too, dripping with some irridescent mucus covering that glowed green in color. A brilliant type of green, kind of like what a freshly-mowed lawn would look like. That type of green. It was cold in here, but there seemed to be a slight warmth flowing from within the pipes for steam was slightly rising from the tops of them.

What was that?

Three little orbs were snug in a valve protruding from the wall. Three different colored orbs. A blue, a yellow, and a white.

"Hey, guys, check this out over here."

Barret turned around with a sigh of disgust, and Jessie had a look of inquiry in her eyes. They came over and looked at them with mixed emotions.

Jessie seemed to like the brilliant colors, but Barret was about as pleased as watching paint dry. "Three orb things. What did you really call me over here for?"

"Haven't you ever seen something as peculiar as this before?"

"Nah, I'm not into gay stuff as that. Sorry."

"I don't see anything gay about this."

"I do. It's got nothing to do with our mission."

"And that makes it gay?"

"Yes. It's just three pieces of rock. Who gives a shit?"

He turned with another sigh of disgust and hastened towards the elevator. Jessie took another look at the glowing jewels and then turned to me with a sweet smile on her face. "Come on, we don't have enough time." She left me there.

What a bunch of simple-minded idiots. How could they ignore something as beautiful as these things, whatever they were. I took another look at them, and as I looked I had a memory. A memory that happened some time ago. These strange orbs were familiar to me, yet I couldn't place where I remembered seeing them or even remembered what they were called. I decided to take them anyway. I grabbed the yellow one ( it was the best looking).

My hand closed around it, and I felt a tremor rush through my body like a fucking seizure. My eyes dilated, and my fingers tingled with an insane, unearthly power. I wrenched the orb out of its socket, squeezed it, and a gigantic lightning bolt seared out of my body and fried the ceiling above me. Sparks from the grated panels dispersed everywhere, and smoke clouded the room. The magic spell was brief, and my body returned to its normal state. I instantly recognized the orb.

"What the fuck did you just do?" exclaimed Barret. His voice was one of fright mixed with astonishment mixed with awe. His eyes were as big as saucer plates.

I was happy now. Now our mission just got much better. "I told you these things were peculiar. These are Materia orbs. Magic spells. It's a friendly reminder of the ancient times, when these were common spectacles to behold. This one in my hand is a lightning spell, that blue one's an Ice spell, and that white one's something I don't know off the tip of my tongue. I don't think it's an attack spell, though."

Jessie seemed pleased; Barret just looked stupid. Apparantly, what I said didn't register in his brain. "So what do they do?"

I grabbed the other two and felt similar powers race through my body. Fortunately, I didn't trigger any reactions from them this go around. Ignoring Barret's question, I said, "We're in good condition now. Shall we proceed?"

Barret seemed to be caught in a whirlwind of thoughts and confusion. It was kind of funny seeing him like that. Cradling the small bomb close to his side, he answered, "I guess that sounds good."

We reached the elevator, ignoring the deafening sounds from our footsteps, and Jessie decoded the security panel. The door opened up revealing a leather interior. Charming Mozart music greeted us softly as we stepped inside. Ah, violins, peaceful anywhere you go. Jessie closed the doors and hit the button for the bottom floor. We were very close to reaching the Core Room. One more spacious room to cross, one more door for Jessie to open and guard, and then Barret and I could install our baby. I lit another Vintage and smiled at the taste.

"God," Barret said suddenly, gritting his teeth.

"What?" Jessie asked. His grunt had made her jump.

"These machines. These fucking life-sappers."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, puffing irritably. If I knew what was coming, it was going to be another one of his Shinra-hating lectures.

"Why do humans just want to destroy things. Destroy the very essence of life around them."

"You talkin about these reactors?" I told you he would do it.

"Yes, you spiky-haired prick. That foul president is killing us all with these nuclear reactors. He's halting the growth of life by promoting more and more money to these death machines. Don't you see? These reactors reap all the minerals from our soil, cut off the food supplies to all the citizens of Lower Midgar, and they have polluted the rivers that run through the mountains south of the city! Midgar is sitting in an arid wasteland with no sustenance whatsoever and the president don't give a flying fuck about it."

Mozart played on above us. The elevator's door opened up revealing, thankfully, an empty room.

I blew another billow of smoke, walked out, and turned to meet his gaze. "Is the obvious solution then to blow his reactors to hell, which could have the great potential of killing most of the citizens in each of the eight Sectors of the city?"

Jessie looked at me sharply. Barret asked, "You got a better solution?"

"Yes. Just let the events run their course. Don't intervene with God's plan and try a gung-ho move like blowing up these reactors. If you don't like it, move out to Kalm or go west where the world seems peaceful and fun-loving over there."

Barret laughed. "See, see that's what I knew you felt about the situation. Guess what, Cloud, millions of people here are suffering because some fool of a man has rounded them all up in a tiny, congested spot on the earth, and he is slowly killing them all off. What is his purpose? I don't know. He is a sick and evil man, and I am going to stop him, Cloud. And you should be agreeing with me. You were a former SOLDIER man! You know all the behind-the-scenes stuff on Shinra's thinking."

"There you go! You're absolutely right, Barret. I know everything about the president's train of thought. I could parrot everything he said to you right now, but that wouldn't mean a thing to us. Unfortunately, I don't care about it. None of it, Barret, none of it. It doesn't mean a damn thing to me. The only thing that matters to me right now is your payment to me at the end of this mission."

He looked like he just got hit by a truck. "What!"

I blew the last puff from my cig and then crushed it on the floor.

Angry, he smashed the wall with his foot. "Fuck! The money is all that you care about!"

I nodded. Was it really that hard to comprehend? The planet was already meant to be dead from the very beginning. Humans are fundamentally evil.

"I can't..." he couldn't finish. He looked at the bomb, fiddled around with it, and handed it to me. "Through that door is our target. Will you please install the bomb?"

"You coming inside, too?"

"Yeah, I'm just asking you to--"

"I'll install the damn thing."

Barret sighed and brushed past me. Jessie bit her lip and couldn't look me in the eye. God dang it all. Was this so hard to comprehend?

She waited at the door, her two pistols pressed against her chest, her face grim and taut. We advanced inward, my shotgun pressed against my thigh and my sword on my back. The bomb was cradled like a precious two-month old in my right arm. Barret was ahead with his M60 searching for surprises anywhere. If there was a surveillance system in this Core Room ( and there probably was), we were already spotted a millenium ago. If that weird tail thing was here, we were probably in for a fun trip. Either way, we laid our argument aside for the moment and walked towards the steel frame.

This room was the most vast of all the rooms of the reactor. There was no ceiling for the large steel frame in the center of the room rose high into the sky. The frame was the main structure of the whole reactor, the sole piece of the puzzle granting the reactor all its strength and energy to carry out its duties. All the power was formulated inside this steel frame, all the ions and electrons and God-knew-what-else was built up in this thing. The frame sat on a strongly supported island high above a great pit of acid-- the yummy yummy leftovers and wastes the reactor's power did not use (another example of the harmful substances plaguing the city of Midgar). A crosswalk that connected the platform we were on to the island was the only accessible means to reach the steel frame. Up in the sky, the steel frame rose past the plate and past Upper Midgar; all eight reactors were built the same way. It was here that the atmosphere was being polluted; the steel frame was open at the very top, and all of its gases and oils eschewed into the clouds cloaking the world in its wastes.

Yeah, sure it was bad. But what could you do anyway? We were only causing more trouble with bombing the damn thing. This really didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Unfortunately, my opinion is only a two-cents remark; besides, it wasn't regarded very highly anyway.

We stepped onto the crosswalk, and a small sense of vertigo afflicted me. My head grew a little light, and my feet felt a little like jello. The steam rising from the acid pit was really warm, and it didn't quite help the feeling I was having. I kept my eyes peeled on the tower, and I eventually stepped onto the island. The feeling soon passed away.

Barret's hands were gripping the railing that wrapped around the steel frame tightly, and he snapped, "God, I hate this place."

I ignored him and stooped to the base of the tower. The bomb was an ingenious creation and a little crude. It was small and had two handles that could hook into two of the many holes encompassing the base of the tower. As I seated it in place, I wrapped the yellow spiral cord protruding out the side of the bomb and worked it in a latch on the tower. I tweaked some knobs and buttons and set a timer of ten minutes on the interface. That was more than enough time to blow the thing skyhigh and escape from it. I punched a button, and the time clock started down. "Time to blow."

A loud rumbling noise came from our right, and a large piece of metal came off the wall and fell into the acid pit. Its metal frame dissolved instantly in the goo, and a great gush of steam billowed up from it. Our eyes reverted to the great gaping hole, and the missing body to the great big red tail I saw earlier appeared out of it.

It was a giant metal scorpion.

Of all the things in the world: a giant metal scorpion! It was all red metal, except for gun-plated arms and a narrow slit in its head where two dark-yellow circles lay. Eyes, I assumed. Its tail was nasty and bloody, as if it had recently just impaled somebody multiple times and then heaved the body around like a rag doll. A mechanical noise came out of it as it saw us, and it curled into an unusual position. Before we could react, it sprang with a startling quickness straight at us.

To our good fortune, a deafening shot echoed in the room, and the scorpion was hit in its metal thorax. The force of the bullet pushed it backwards away from us, but the scorpion flailed its legs and gripped the sides of the crosswalk, saving itself from an acidic death. We looked to our left and spotted Wedge reloading another shot into his Junonian-made sniper rifle. Our glorious savior.

"Fuck, this is going to cost us," Barret said, fixing his gunarm and running towards the flailing robot. A mess of bullets penetrated through the crosswalk and nailed the robot's skin. It clung desperately to the railing fighting against the onslaught of Barret's terrific M60 machine gun. A couple of its legs lost grip, and its body sagged downward; a couple more hits and the thing was toast. Unfortunately, Barret's clip went out, and the gun blew empty rounds. He cursed and hastened to reload; this was not good, because I could see that the scorpion was pissed. Indeed, it pulled itself together and leapt backwards end over end onto the crosswalk. Its gunarms opened alive firing little beads at us with fumbled accuracy. A couple hit Barret's back, and he dove to the ground dropping his new clip. I dodged the spray of bullets and fumbled for the Lightning Materia in my belt.

I knew these mechanical robots did not have a liking to thunderous activity. The electricity short-circuited their innards, and the lesser mechanical monsters were easily crushed assunder with this Materia. This big bitch of a beast could take a beating. This magic, though, would weaken it, and I smiled greedily. I wrapped my hand around the orb and felt the energy whip through my body. Instantly, a jagged bolt of lightning zigzagged out of me and penetrated the creature's abdomen. It was so powerful that it cut off the mechanical circulation to three of its eight legs. The right gunarm fell off, and it's two right hind legs disentigrated into nothingness. The poor little thing stopped firing and fell lopsided against the railing of the crosswalk and whimpered.

I saw Barret smile, as he loaded his clip. He laid a second round on the creature. Large sheathes of metal peeled off of it, and Barret succeeded in lopping off another limb. The scorpion shriveled backward and backward helplessly and defenselessly. I pulled my big Buster sword off my back and rushed to the dying creature, preparing to deliver a final blow. Yet, I failed to see that the creature had a Plan B. It's tail was still alive and throbbing, and it raised it up. I barely saw a bright ball of blue light flicker above the tip of the tail before a flash of light illuminated the Core Room. A searing laser rocked me into the air and tore the crosswalk in half. The chunks of metal floor fell into the acid. Barret had rolled out of the way of the laser, but I was thrown all the way into the steel tower. My back hit hard against the frame, and I landed on my stomach on the island. Damn, that hurt.

With apparant renewed confidence, the scorpion stumbled to a standing position and was going to fire from its left gunarm. Its eyes deepened a darker yellow, almost as if it was having a pleasurable experience over this.

Wedge's rifle cracked alive, and the bullet ripped through its abdomen. The scorpion cried out sharply and genuflected. It cried in undeniable pain. Yet, Wedge was a master of the sniper rifle, and he had another bullet loaded in the chamber in record time. He aimed higher and fired a third, direct shot into the scorpion's head. The yellow eyes faded out, and the scorpion's body plummeted over the railing and dissolved quickly in the acid pit below.

"Come on!" Wedge yelled. "Take the stairs in the room Jessie's guarding up and come to my position. We're too late to reach our starting point! There's an entrance to a sewer system over here. Hurry!" He then turned and ran down the hallway.

I saw Barret get up, and I started to. My lower back cried out in pain. Shit, I hope I wasn't paralyzed. I wasn't, but it didn't feel good. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the time clock. "Fuck! We got less than four minutes!"

"Can you get up!"

I struggled up and fell back to the floor. I struggled again and made it this time. I sheathed the sword back in its place and winced as I straightened my back. I hope there wasn't a damn bone broken. I could see a couple streaks of blood on Barret's back, but he didn't seem to be aware of that. "Thank God for Wedge, eh?"

"Hell yeah, but look at this shit! That damn son of a bitch robot fried part of this crosswalk!"

He was right. We were going to have to jump over this hole. Good news for my damn back. Barret immediately hopped across the gap expertly landing on the other side. He turned and jerked his arm. "Come on!"

That damn sense of vertigo hit me again. Of all the bloody times.

"Come on, Cloud!"

Gritting my teeth and wishing for a cigarette, I jumped and winced at the pain in my lower back. I thought I felt something shift down there. I made the other side haphazardly, and Barret caught my arms and dragged me down the crosswalk. The time clock kept its steady pace. I didn't realize it before, but there were klaxons going off; their deathly, monotonous sirens rang and rang signalling the end of the life of the reactor.

Jessie was waving frantically, and Biggs had joined her. We reached them and took the stairs, frantically scaling as fast as we could. At the top, we ran across the platform, into the upper regions of the Core Room, and down the hallway. Wedge stood frantically waving his arms; the klaxons continued ringing unabated. My back ached tremendously.

As soon as we reached the door, the klaxons stopped. The room fell ill to a deadly silence, and I faintly heard a popping noise. On the walls, a reflection of intense light shone brightly on its metal frame. The air and the atmosphere became much, much warmer. Then, all five of us fell into a shaft, down bumps and corners and into finally a vast, rank outlet; we landed in the sewers just as Sector One's Mako Reactor blew to high heaven. It was so fucking deafening, all our ears felt like they had been sliced off in one clean swoop. Heat from the sweltering fires above reached us even down here, and bits and pieces of strewn metal fell into the slick rivers of sewage. We could only presume what the carnage looked like on the outside at this wee hour of the morning.

Wedge finally had a contented look on his face, as he sat there with his back against the wall, the sniper rifle lying in his lap. He always was uptight, tense. Now, he finally seemed at one with himself. Thank God he was there at the Core Room. I think I owe him a beer now.

Our little destruction had blocked the exit of the sewer system, and right now Jessie had managed a little stick of dynamite in her big pouch and was applying it to the smashed rubble. That chick could think of anything.

Biggs was applying a medicine needle to his arm. Whether it was an actual medicine or a dose of heroin I'm not sure-- but it always made him happy afterwards.

Barret and I were drinking Potions that Jessie also had in her pouch. Barret's scars were practically all healed. Mine were about half-way done, but my back still ached like crap. Barret was right. These little drinks did taste like piss.

"Okay, boys, clear out," she called out while running away from the blocked entrance. We covered our ears, and a few seconds later a small explosion blew the rubble apart; clear light shone into the dank sewer, and we quickly escaped its confinement. We all kind of smelled like sweat, smoke, and shit. Mm-mmm. Lovely combination.

At four o'clock in the morning, nothing in Lower Midgar is awake. All the people and glamour stuff are up and about at this hour in Upper Midgar. Down here, though, nothing exciting goes on here. Except for the burning reactor high above us. Oh man, it's so cool looking. Jesus, we ruined the thing. The frame is nothing more than a fiery skeleton. Tons of burning metal lay everywhere. And wouldn't you know it, just like I said earlier: some of the apartment complexes and dwellings around the reactor got tore apart by burning debris. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if there were a few casualties around here. Was the plot successful? I guess you can say the reactor died so the job got done. Heh. Just tell that to these apartment dwellers. I'm sure they'll happily oblige with that.

Barret, though, was smiling. "Mission accomplished. One down, seven to go. Then to Phase Two, my friends: Shinra Corporation itself."

Biggs, Jessie, and Wedge all smiled and nodded like kids at a birthday party. I made no response, and I think they noticed that. Barret ignored it, and looked around him. "Alright, gang. People are obviously awake right now. Split up and meet at the train station. According to my watch if it's still working-- which it is-- the next train departs at 0430. We've got about seventeen minutes til then. I imagine that with this latest commotion, all means of business and transportation have come to a halt temporarily so the train probably won't leave on schedule. Even so, be there at 0425. Everyone understand?"

We all nodded. He gave a triumphic grin and raised his middle finger at the direction of Shinra Corporation, and then he took off westward. The other two guys went south, while Jessie went east stealing a shy glimpse at me while leaving. Standing alone there, I had a fleeting idea of not showing up. Boy, would that be hilarious. It actually sounded like a good idea.

But then I remembered I wouldn't get paid.

And that was 3000 gil!

Shit. I guess I had to go to the train station after all. I let out a heavy sigh and proceeded in a northerly direction straight to the marketplace.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

**I**

The train depot was due north from here, judging from my half-warped compass I carried in my back pocket. A while ago, I had had the compass hanging around my neck because I thought that was the way cool people carried compasses on them. Well, I realized too late that the string holding the compass wasn't very strong. One night as I was paying a visit to the urinal, I had leaned over and the necklace broke. The compass fell into the little bit of crappy water down there, and all the intricate mechanisms inside it became all crapped up. Amazingly, it still worked a little bit ( even though sometimes I ended up going west when I wanted to go east, but that was only a minor problem).

I was pretty sure I was going north, but as I said before... I wasn't a very wise person.

What I did know for certain was that I had entered a fairly large-sized marketplace, which normally was empty at this hour. Only deserted stands lay in a big square around the area; at about seven o' clock, all the merchants would arrive at the same time and set up shop. At eight, the shopping would begin; by that time everyone in Lower Midgar would be up and about milling about their everyday remedial lives avoiding gang bangers and pimps. Nice. Unfortunately, the place now had a whole bustle of people milling about in nightgowns and pajamas at four in the morning. They had petrified expressions, and a bunch of babies were bawling their eyes out. People were shoving each other and shouting at each other just to see the wondrous view of the Mako Reactor burning to ashes.

I pushed past them, ignoring inquiries from some folks in the mass. One guy put his arm on my shoulder to try to halt me, but I grabbed his wrist and yanked his arm backwards separating the bones connecting to his shoulder blades. Come on, people, do you really think I am in a good mood to talk here? In short, of course, I'm in a hurry. Not that I'm enjoying where I need to go. Hell no on that one.

I turned back once, and I had to stop. The fire was slowly dying away, and the metal frame was almost depleted. If the corporation wanted to rebuild it, they would need about three hundred billion dollars and about five years to make it even closely resemble what it used to be. Heh, by that time Barret and his gang would've destroyed the other seven and gone on to other matters of interest. You know, in a way, I'm kind of glad that that reactor of Sector One is gone. Yeah, I didn't much care for it as much as Barret didn't. Yet, his view has no relation at all to my way of thinking. I'm not sure if I can find the right words now, but suffice it all I'm glad it's gone.

I turned back around on my northerly route thinking now about the wonderful sum of money I was going to be getting. With this new amount, I could finally get a new custom part for my shotgun; it would make the reload time much quicker to handle, and it might even help with the fire power. That would be too cool.

Unfortunately, I bumped into a girl, and she fell to the ground spilling her basket of flowers all over the street.

_Sonofabitch_. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I didn't mean to do that." I bent down and lifted her up. "I apologize. If I wasn't so dang clumsy, I.. I don't know what I'd do. I'm--" _Wait a minute_. I looked at her face and then on down. My God, she was beautiful. "I-I uh, I was l-looking at that reactor o-over there, and I--"

She didn't seem to have an annoyed look on her face; rather, she was actually smiling. She had extremely long brown hair, falling all the way past her butt. Braided end over end from the back of her head on down. She had a pretty pink ribbon with some sort of a white jewel stuck in the center, and that ribbon laced the end of her braided hair in a bow. A curled tuft of her brown hair fell over her left eye; she looked extremely sexy in the dim light of these slums. What the hell was a most beautiful babe of a woman doing in these nasty pigsties of hell for anyway? This was bizarre, totally unbelievable, and a major turn-on. Wow! She seemed to smile even bigger at my most probably dumbass expression I had on my face. Her voice was angelic when she spoke. "Thank you for helping me up. You don't have to be so apologetic."

I thought my cheeks were getting hot, and I couldn't find anything to say. Suddenly, my eyes fell to the ground, and I saw her flowers. Man, _flowers_! Hold on a second, here. Am I dreaming shit up now. Dear Lord, I haven't had a bloody samurai yet, and already I think I'm hallucinating. How could flowers grow in a city that had no sunlight? No water. No real, fresh air! Even so, I didn't think twice about stooping back down and collecting as many as I could that weren't thoroughly damaged or soiled. I thought I saw her beam at me when she bent down, too. She was wearing some kind of perfume that was divine and fruit-smelling. A perfume that smelled like fruit wasn't something you smelled everyday. But it smelled good. I tried not to stare like a pervert would at her attire. She had a pretty, low-cut skirt on that showed a beautiful, porcelain chest. She wore a red, unbuttoned jacket over it.

I pushed those thoughts out of my head and cleared my throat. "Hey, I'm really sorry about all this. I didn't mean to ruin your flowers for you or your customers."

"You are a very sweet gentleman, but you don't need to apologize. No one buys my flowers anyway... but thank you for helping me out."

I had all the flowers in her basket, and before I answered her I took a look at them. She had roses, tulips, marigolds, all kinds of flowers. Practically one giant bouquet there. And no one wanted to buy them from such a pretty girl as herself? What, were the men here homosexual? "Well, miss, I don't know why anyone in their right mind wouldn't, but..." I reached into my pocket and pulled out my wallet. I had about fifty gil coins in there. "... how much are they?"

Her eyes grew wide, as if she never heard someone say that before. Then she frowned. "They're only one gil a piece."

"You mind if I have some?"

She looked at me, seemed to study me a bit, and then smiled. "I only have ten on me."

"Do you want to save any for future... sales?"

"I doubt there'll be any more."

"Then, I'll take all of them."

She seemed to like that. We made the transaction, and I fastened the ten goodies to the inside of my raincoat. They'd be safe there. I thought of something then. "Were those the only ten you had in stock?"

She nodded. "Yes, it is so hard to grow them in this city. Nobody here... except you... seems to appreciate such a beautiful thing as a flower; everybody seems to look down on me for doing it. I have to scrape whatever I can to get by for supplies and food for myself and these flowers."

Was this a line that she was feeding me? I had heard things like this before. Even so, she was a hot woman. You rarely saw them here in Midgar, and she seemed ( on a serious note) to be telling the truth. I figured it was probably 100 the truth. I gave her the other forty gil coins and smiled at her astonished expression.

Before she could respond, I said, "Ma'am, I think it's terrible that a beautiful girl like yourself should have to live like that. I think it's awesome to see someone trying to bring some life, some sort of Nature to this godforbidden place. This place where people might actually _eat_ other people! I just hope that you're okay here and nothing bad hurts you. That would be the worst sin ever, I think. " She started to protest, but I touched her arm gently. "Please take it. It's all that I have, but I want you to have it. Please."

She looked at me, and I saw that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. In that one moment, I saw her eyes, those beautiful emerald eyes. They peered into me, and I felt my heart melt in passion. Her lips curled up in the biggest smile, and her eyes seemed to moisten with tears of joy. She reached over and planted a small kiss on my cheek. "I don't know what to say, except... thank you. You don't know how much this means to me. Thank you."

"You're very welcome." We smiled at each other, and both of us seemed rooted to our places. I thought for sure that I had met the woman of my dreams here. That's kind of sappy, don't you think? Well, believe me audience, you'd do anything to be in my shoes right now I can guarantee it.

Then it hit me: _I didn't know her name_!

Before I could ask it, a train whistle blew several yards east of us.

Train whistle?

I looked at my watch.

_4:40_

Oh fuck! The train! I was supposed to be at the train station at 4:25!

Goddammit.

"Is something wrong?" the beautiful woman in the pretty, pink skirt said to me.

"Listen. Now, I really have to apologize. I've got to go! That train whistle that just blew... that was my train!"

Her eyes widened. "It's already departed. You missed it."

"Nah, I've got to be on it."

"But you can't catch it now."

She didn't know me very well. "Ma'am, I don't want to leave, but I must. I promise you, though, that we'll see each other again. I promise you that." I took off. God, did I feel like a dumbass now.

"Wait!" I heard her yell. "You didn't tell me your name!"

"Just call me Spiky Hair!" That joke didn't make a whole lot of sense even to me. God, was I such a dumbass! She watched me as I ran all the way down the street, pushing people out of the way, and huffing and puffing like a bat out of hell.

I hoped that I'd see her again.

The flower girl of Sector One.

Strike that.

The _beautiful_ flower girl of Sector One.

**II**

Thankfully, for my sake, I knew the layout of the Sector. Each of the eight were different and set up in their own unique way. This one was by far the easiest to navigate around, but it also had a few more nutcases residing in it than the other seven did. Fortunately, the exploded reactor had pretty much gripped everyone's attention at this point, so I didn't run into any troubling civilians.

That damn whistle was getting louder and louder. That was good, for this symbolized that I was getting nearer to a set of train tracks. If I could just get there in time, I would be okay. Do a little SOLDIER move over the railing and onto the back of the train, and I would be alright-- no sweat. The tracks were just around this building.

I rounded the corner and saw it race on by on its winding route north to Sector Two.

"Son of a bitch," I muttered alongside my raspy breathing. I hated running. Running was one of my most stubborn obstacles during the military. I'm amazed I even passed basic training.

_This_ wasn't good. There was only one other place I could reach the tracks. A ways east of here was the farthest-most train depot of Sector One, where the train would pass on through and on into the next Sector. Dammit, I had to run again.

Unfortunately, I heard a click-click sound and a mechanical voice. "Halt, Avalanche member! We've finally tracked you down."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw five armed security robots similar to the two I had killed earlier standing at the corner of the cobblestone intersections. All of them were pointing loaded MP5s at me, and they probably didn't want to take me into custody. Fuck em, I say. Out of sight, my right hand pawed the holster of my shotgun; I whirled in a quick spin and fired a shot straight into the head of the robot that had hollered at me. No sooner had the shot been fired that I had whirled back around and was now running to and from any cover I could possibly find.

All this and a fucking train to catch up to. Just great.

The other four bawled mechanical fodder and began blasting carelessly at me, clipping anything that came into their sights. Buildings, windows, streetlights, people-- basically just about anything that got in their way. A couple of the little bullets whipped past me, barely missing my body, as I dashed to and from every cover. With sweat pouring down my face, I stayed behind one particularly decent cover and shot one robot twice in its gut and another in both knees. The other two were too near for me to reload quick enough, so I decided to have some fun. We all love fun, don't we? A flash of light raced across the nearby buildings, and the robots stopped their running. Before they knew what was coming, my sword pierced their necks and punctured through every curcuit of life they ever had. I cut off the life of the robot that was missing the use of his knees and legs, as well.

Now I was late.

The train was rounding the long corner north of me; the only route to the station was east. My feet resumed their flight. For those of you good with mythology studies, I became a regular old Hermes at this moment, whipping around like a bolt of lightning through clouds of people, shoppes, and parked cars. Dashing over gutters, swinging past intersections, and (unfortunately!) even bumping into poor old ladies. I was doing a fucking Peter Pan trek through Lower Midgar!

Just when I thought my already ruined lungs would burst into blood, I saw the light of the train station come into view. I also saw a billow of smoke belch out of the train some couple hundred yards to my left. Sucking that pudgy gut in, I picked up a little speed and did a running jump maneuver.

Basically, I leapt off a produce stand that was sitting near the tracks, and I flew onto the lowest point of the train station's roof. Gathering composure, I stood up and leapt off the roof and jumped onto the train as the hulky, black locomotive swept on by the depot. The force of my landing and the physics of speed and wind velocity propelled me end over end in continous somersault on down the train's carts all the way to the cabousse. I fell off the top and landed in the little cart stand that the cabousse offered for passengers to view the sights of Midgar if they so chose to. I blacked out for about nine seconds and then awoke to find a thin trickle of blood running into my left eye. My right cheek had a large bruise, and I had several bruises lining my arms and my chest. My back felt like a diced tomato, and my raincoat and blue sweater were torn revealing bloody skin. My left ankle seemed out of place, and I thought I saw dots floating around in front of my eyes.

Yet... I was _alive_.

**III**

How I managed to enter the cabousse I don't really know, but I thrust open the door and stumbled inside. I fell to the floor, and my chin split open. I didn't feel that prick of pain; I wasn't really feeling anything at this moment. I propped myself up and stared straight into the eyes of Barret, Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie. What a fucking coincidence!

"Looks like someone ravaged you good," Barret said nonchalantly, staring at me with a rather useless indiffernce. "We were wondering what that racket was ontop of this freight. But, guess what."

"What?" Some of that blood from my chin found its way to my tongue, and I tasted a strong copper. Ew.

" 'What?' he says, pah! You're like two thousand years late, dumbass! What and where have you been and been doing? Comin' in here, making a big scene, all covered in blood and shit."

Biggs had a cigar stuck between his fat lips, and he was rocking back and forth enjoying it. "As long as he's back with us, nothing else maters, don't it?"

Barret gave him the finger. "Did anybody ask for your opinion?"

Biggs blew a billow of smoke. "Nah. Just thought I'd spew it."

Jessie was the only one looking seriously relieved. I'm sure the other three, including Barret, were relieved as well... but they're dudes (their thinking is a bit different than that of women). Anyway, she came over with her pouch of gracious items and said, "I'm glad you're safe. I do wish, though, that you'd be a little more safer. Look at you!"

"Hey!" That stubborn, one armed prick was yelling at me again. "Hey, you still didn't answer my question!"

"Give it a rest," Jessie said, "he's here with us again. Be thankful for that."

"I'm not romantic, girl. I'm glad he's with us. I'm not glad that we have a great, fu---"

I tuned the rest out. Blah, blah, blah. My body was seriously hurting now, now that I had actually become aware of what my scars looked like. She had brushed my raincoat aside, and was fixing up my sweater. The wounds were crystal clear; that damn train tore at least six deep tears across my chest and a few more on my back. She applied a few thick bandages to some of the more deeper tears; then, for some reason, she grabbed my arm and rubbed an alcohol-bathed tissue on my skin. I had no idea what she was doing, until the needle came out.

Oh shit.

I hate needles.

The world grew light and splotchy as I felt the ice cold metal pierce through. Equally ice cold liquid was injected in my veins, and I felt like blacking out. I vaguely heard myself asking what that liquid was, and I heard an equally vague response of something called an X-Potion. Jesus, why couldn't these healing potion drink things be something way more pleasant to take in? A few seconds later, the world came back to me. I looked at my chest and saw that the wounds were rapidly disappearing away. Now that was some potent stuff.

I looked up and saw that Biggs had left. Wedge was tightening some screws on a box for some strange reason; then, he too left. Barret was snickering. "Wow," he said with a mocking tone inflecting, "I can't believe it. Great old SOLDIER boy is afraid of needles. Wow." He got up and, unable to contain himself, laughed his way out the door as well.

"Stupid fucker."

Jessie sighed, and I turned to see her staring at me with a mixture of annoyance of shyness. "Sometimes, you cuss too much."

"Can't help it when the leader is a dickhead."

She gave me a look.

"Pardon... when the leader is an idiot."

"That's not much better."

I shrugged my shoulders. Hey, Barret was a dickhead and an idiot. Wow, big news flash there. Why was she looking at me that way? That shy look. "You got something to say?"

"I'm just glad to see that you're okay."

"Well... thanks for that."

She looked like she wanted to say something. Well, what was the holdup? I know she's interested in me, but she's too tomboyish for me. I don't find that attractive or hot or anything. I guess that's kind of mean, but that's just my taste, folks. She apparantly decided against it and got up and walked out the cabousse. I decided to get up as well; not much you can do in the cabousse. Just a bunch of cargo. Not much fun.

Out in the passenger carts, I found the four of them sitting on the seats. It was probably a good idea to take a rest anyway; I had been standing up and moving around for probably twelve hours now! I walked over to one of the plush cushion seats and sat down... and leaned back. Oh man, did that feel good. Like sitting on a layer of clouds. That soft, red cushion was the best thing ever made! I saw that the others must've been feeling the same way, too. Biggs had the cigar in his fingers, but he had forgotten about that and was lost in slumberland. Wedge was halfway there. Barret was sprawled out, taking over one side of the cart and grinning widely. Jessie was looking at her laptop, fiddling around on some site.

There was only one other passenger in the cart besides us, but I guess the others didn't think he was a threat. I kind of believed that. This guy looked like a loony in some psychiatric ward. His face was a dirty slop of mud, and he was covered in wet newspapers. He smelled like marijuana, too.

Jessie piqued my interest, so I got up and joined her. "What's that?"

She didn't answer me at first. She clicked on an icon, and a bunch of weird, green hexagonal shapes appeared. A yellow, dotted line came afterwards snaking a path through the geometry. She finally explained, "This is a small scale model of President Shinra's city and a replica of his train security. The trains run on a ID-coded system. All the IDs of the citizens of Midgar are kept in a large source-- like that of a bank-- in the Corporation's Security Department. The CSD knows that some citizens are not exactly loyal to the Corporation, like us. They want us and every other citizen affiliated with any terrorist organization eliminated from the city. They're normally successful, but they can't reach the more intelligent 'terrorist' members-- like us."

"We're 'intelligent' terrorists?"

"Well... some of us anyway. The main reason we haven't been caught is that we're using fake IDs. IDs well-constructed to resemble that of ordinary law-abiding citizens. That fact plus us being well covert has made us both lucky and successful in not getting caught."

"Successful, yes," Barret chirped up. "Lucky, no. We're skilled people, Jess. Luck is for the dimwits who fail everything."

"Well, we had a lot of luck today."

"No, not at all. In fact, we did spectacular! Not just because the Mako Reactor blew to hell, but because everybody did their part. You had the bomb and the codes; Biggs did great defense; Wedge played his part magnificently; and the SOLDIER boy and I pulled a great ending maneuver. Mission well accomplished, I say!"

"Wrong, boss," Biggs suddenly said. He had awoke momentarily. "The mission's not accomplished yet, until I take a shower!"

_Absolutely_. All of us smelled terrible. Sweat, burning ash, and a little sewer juice. That reminds me, I wonder what that cute flower girl thought of my aroma. Aw, damn, I probably smelled horrible to her nose! Why does life suck sometimes?

The lights went out just then. A series of red flashes lit the room, and a loud shriek echoed throughout the train. It was ear-splitting and seemed as if the world was collapsing. It lasted for ten seconds that seemed to last for ten years.

The lights returned, and I was surprised to see that the newspaper-laden boy had not budged an inch. I found that I was gripping the nice seat cushion with tight hands, and my heart was racing at a thousand kilometers an hour. Was that outburst really necessary?

Wedge had woken up as if somebody had shot him. Biggs had dropped the cigar, and a piece of ash had burned his leg. Barret had a wide-eyed stare, and Jessie was breathing hard and clutching her chest. She wheezed out, " That's the ID security checkpoint. We passed it."

Goddamn President Shinra.

**IV**

A couple hours later gave us a time pretty close to seven in the morning and the oh-so-lovely view of Sector Seven. Ah, the slums were so pretty-- pretty ugly that is. The hydraulics system unlocked the train's doors, and all five of us got off and walked off the depot platform. Most of Lower Midgar was blocked of sunlight and good, natural water sources. What little patches of broken metal in the massive plate fixed above Lower Midgar that allowed for an open view of sky was a blessing to the slum citizens. A few rays of sunlight greeted us as we stepped out of the western-most train depot of Sector Seven.

As I said before, the city of Midgar is separated. Largely, it is separated for the people based on the people's level of education, wealth, and place in society. Needless to say, over seventy percent of the population (equalling to about roughly six million people) live in the Lower part of the city. Years ago, during President Shinra's first term of service, a massive oval plate was built in the city. Directly in the center. Eight massive pillars supported the plate, with one pillar in each sector. The pillars were an engineering masterpiece, able to lift tons of massively heavy metal chunks up in the sky. These pillars were nearly indestructible... or so the citizens of Lower Midgar hoped that that was true. They were really afraid of the plate; they also abhorred it. It was really an abomination for the President to construct it. Upper Midgar grew ontop of the plate; it was a smaller replica of its Lower counterpart. Upper Midgar, though, was clean and glamorous; the citizens enjoyed fresh air and beautiful mountain scenery. All food and water sources channeled into them before anyone of Lower Midgar even began to notice. Once the eight nuclear reactors were built, the citizens of Lower Midgar were soon lost into degradation.

The President , still, has found no solution to aid his troubled people, and I believe that he doesn't give a rat's ass about it. He's too busy enjoying trips to seafood town Junon, gambler's paradise Mideel, and snowboarding fan country Icicle Town. Meanwhile, the Joe Blows and the Joe Missies forever consume themselves in poverty, gang warfare, and cannibalism.

I say... who cares. Collect the 3000 gil for myself and hike on out of here.

The money's all I need now. Maybe I can find that flower chick, and she and I can move out to Kalm or something. Have a family there or something like that. Away from this nasty place, this place of no light and water. Away from Barret's trivial outbursts. Away from everything.

We walked the dusty streets, unpaven and lacking the somewhat beautiful cobblestone markings that Sector One contained. Unpleasant smells everywhere with drunks sleeping in trash cans; some were awake and eating things inside them. Sometimes, when I was bored, I would play a game and see how many sadly disgusting things I could find. Sometimes Biggs would play, and we would set up a points scale. For example, find a drunk in a trash can and you'd get fifty points; a pickpocket was common, so you'd get only ten points for that. A carjacker was sort of common, sixty points. The rare finds were arsonists, female gangsters, and rottweilers attacking babies. The last one awarded us about five hundred points. Extremely rare, but a brutal sight to see. Hey, how can you feel pity here in these slums? Babies here die everyday. Birth 'em out one hour, and they're gone the next.

Entering the Manseco district, we could see our hideout. The group's seventh one. Barret had almost been caught in the last one up in Tybrone. Shinra's snoop patrol had tracked a cocaine shipment that a former member of Avalanche had made to the group. The cocaine shipment got intercepted by the police, and Barret had to shoot his way out of the mess. The clumsy Avalanche member was caught in the crossfire, but Barret and the others had managed to get away. The gunarm man, when his inevitable anger had finally subsided, searched everywhere for a more covert location. He befriended this barmaid up in Manseco, and she accepted the group's stay. In fact, she signed onto the group as a support person.

It was a very interesting scenario, too. She and I went way back. Not as a couple or anything ( although... sometimes I wish we had a fling together... she's really hot), but we grew up together in a small, backwoods town called Nibelheim. She seemed really excited that one afternoon, when I showed up on the bar's porch trailing Barret and his ragtag cohorts. Her bar, the Seventh Heaven, got good business. A pretty bartender, a nice set of steaks and ribeyes, and a great collection of distilled vodka was a winning lottery ticket for the citizens of Lower Midgar. It was the happenin place up in Manseco; even at seven in the morning there was a pretty good-sized number when we arrived at the porch.

"Aw, yeah," Biggs sighed happily. He rubbed his stomach and stretched his back. "Fellas, it's time we settle down and eat. Who's up for T-bone?"

The normally quiet Wedge perked up at the mention of a nice slab of steak. "Give me some A-1, and that'll be much better."

"My treat, sniper," Biggs laughed, patting the pudgster on his back and leading him in.

Jessie followed. If I knew her, she'd probably just want some green tea and a read of the newspaper. She didn't like eating for some reason, claiming it made her sick to eat a whole lot.

Barret said nothing, which seemed out of place. Then I realized something: he was probably awaiting to see his daughter. Marlene lived here, working alongside Tifa and helping her keep the bar. Barret hated leaving Marlene here, but since his wife died this was the only place that was safe for her. Tifa was good with children and made sure some of the more uncivilized citizens left her alone. Mr. Muscles went inside, leaving me on the porch.

I remembered the flowers, and pulled my torn raincoat aside to inspect them. Shit, wouldn't you know it. Only one of them was fresh and clean. The other nine were stained with dried blood or crushed from my fall. Only a sweet, yellow rose flower was left. I buried the others, gathered my composure, and went inside.

**V**

A few citizens drank out of nicely-made glasses, and a few others were caught up in the splurge of news coverage in the destruction of Mako Reactor No. 1. Aerial views caught sight of a huge crater where the massive structure once stood. A thin circle of fire still burned at the base, but the mainframe was all gone. All of the citizens were actually smiling at the television set, and some gave a big "Hell yeah" shout, toasting the damn set and sloppily drinking their mugs. Biggs and Wedge were gorging their T-bones and downing each bite with one of six full mugs of rum, occasionally emitting a loud belch or two of pleasure.

I turned to the bar and saw her bright-eyed face staring at me, her body gesture slanted showing off her nice tanned legs. Great-looking muscle tone. I must've looked stupid gawking at her like that. She offered me a smirking smile and asked, "What is that flower for?"

I didn't realize that I was holding the damn thing tightly in my left hand. I walked over to her and offered it to her. "I found it in the Sector. A pretty old thing that I've never seen here before. Was wondering if you wanted it."

She took it and stared at it like she would've stared at an engagement ring. "Wow... it's beautiful." She thought of something, and her eyes grew passive. "I'd like that."

"What?"

"I'd like my whole bar to be covered in flowers. Hundreds of them. String em up along the walls all the way around. Add some flavor to this dreary place."

"Well, I wish there were more in this town. That would be a neat idea."

Tifa Lockheart smiled at me and reached under the bar for a clear glass. "What would you like, SOLDIER boy?"

"A shot of Stolichnaya, slum waitress."

She smiled coquetishly at my snide remark and filled it full. Everyone knew that I was her favorite customer, and everybody always gave me respect whenever I was around. I even had to take in young men who wanted her phone number but were too afraid to ask for it. Jeez, if she weren't so doggone pretty...

Barret's footsteps stopped me from finishing my gloriously awesome drink, and I turned to see both him and little ten-year old Marlene Wallace. She was munching on a candy bar and sitting mighty high and proud on her daddy's shoulders. He jerked his head behind him and said, "Time to have a meeting before bedtime."

Good. Time for payday. I finished the glass, thanked Tifa for the drink, and followed Barret down to the basement. The basement was the gang's actual hideout, separted from the public's bar by a game room. Pinball machines and pool tables were another favorite for the people of Manseco to spend their time with. Past the Android pinball machine was a long corridor with a coded door. Only Jessie and Barret knew of the code, so nobody else could infiltrate it and discover who the entourage of Avalanche really were. So many people in Lower Midgar wanted desperately to know the identities of the "terrorist" group, that they'd do anything to find it-- I mean, they'd even kill defenseless animals to try to get the information. I'm not sure if they would feel ashamed of themselves once they actually got the information, but I guess that's their dealings.

Inside the basement, one could find a relatively comfortable atmosphere. You had a pretty decent library of books and magazines on the east wall; a small kitchen and dining set on the western wall; a few beds to the north; and on the south, by the entrance, you'd find a TV and Jessie's personal corner of subterfuge stuff. She kept everything diabolically suitable to Avalanche here: bomb-making plans, gun pieces, stolen Shinra documents, and countless newspaper clippings of Midgar's interior corps. Her corner was well-organized considering the massive amount, and she was right in her chair snipping away at the latest information reading on the television screen. I stopped and looked at the tube. One of those pansy-ass reporters was all suited up in front of the destroyed Mako reactor flapping his gums like a marionette. His voice was annoyingly nasal when he spoke. "Everyone is surably quite stunned at this morning's unexpected terrorist attack down in Lower Midgar's Sector One. The infamous terrorist clan who call themselves Avalanche is suspected widely across the board as being the ones responsible for utterly wiping out this Sector's Mako reactor completely off the face of the Planet. The attack came at around four o clock, Midgar Time, today shaking the citizens of this fine city to complete and utter confusion. Avalanche was also responsible for the burning of the string of apartment complexes surrounding the giant reactor. Pieces of burning metal that came off of the reactor fell into the homes of these sleeping people. Miraculously, no one was killed, but thirty people were injured. One has been confirmed paralyzed from the waist down.

"President Shinra has said that he is taking immediate action on the situations, saying that ' the terrorists will not stop at what they are doing based under a false pretense that the city of Midgar is neglecting and killing its own citizens. I, in turn, say that they are floating high on a cloud in fairy-tale land, and I will see to it that these nonsensical cretins get rubbed out of our noses forever'. Applause was generated by the President's remark, and I for one agree. We'll keep you live with continuous updates as the situation changes. For now, I'm Walt Williams, Channel Four News."

Heh. So much for the idea of a no-bias news group. It was hard to tell what side all these people were on. They would say one thing and then do another. What the fuck?

"You still thinking about SOLDIER?"

The question was abrupt and out-of-the-blue. I turned to see Barret looking at me with his arms crossed, anticipating an answer. Why would he ask that question at this point of time? "I told you what happened to me."

"Yeah, I know all that shit. But people experience things, and they think totally opposite feelings about them. You still have feelings for the President and his whole entourage."

_Now this was utter bullshit_. "What the hell led you to that insinuation? Do you honestly think that what happened to me makes me feel... compelled to go back in?"

"You said you only wanted money, you spiky-haired prick! Well, here you go!" He threw a brown, tied sack to me. "Take your fucking money. You slimy piece of shit."

"Oh, this is very mature of you. You want to play that game, why don't you put both arms on the table and fight me man-to-man."

"This stubby arm is a personal vendetta of mine, you--"

"So is my involvement with Shinra! And as I told you before, I am _through_ with those Corporate fucks! Through, do you hear? Through! But that's not all that I'm through with around here."

"What else, Cloud? What else can you possibly be through with?"

"I don't give a flying fuck what you think this Planet's going under. You think it's going under the toilet, well it probably is. That's only because people live on this Planet. Without people, the Planet lives and thrives as it normally should like any other rocky planetoid. For some strange reason, there are people here that have been living here for milleniums. Why, I don't really know, but they're here. People fuck other people and things up, and the Planet is going to be a by-product of that. Like I said before, let things pass as they have been foretold to pass by God Himself.

"But no... you don't want to do that. You and everyone else here want to go around and throw up your arms and say 'We're going to make a difference'. What's your difference? Killing other people! Exactly what the other side is doing to you. Your quota: An eye for an eye. Mine: Keep your damn eye and bear through it. Humans live on this Planet for roughly seventy years give or take a few and substituting out the threat of cancer deaths. Bear through it, and you'll die much more peacefully."

Everyone was looking at me as if I were the AntiChrist or something. Barret sighed in deeply and said, "Well, what are you going to do now?"

"I'm finally going to get some real air outside of this city!"

I turned on my heels and was face-to-face with Tifa. Her arms were crossed, but her eyes showed pain that hurt me somewhere in my chest-- I think it was my heart but I'm not certain. I brushed past her with my brown sack in my hand and walked up the corridor. I untied the rope thread and looked inside. Exactly 3000 gil. Good stuff right there. Inside the bar, the crowd had thickened and people were already drunk. At seven-thirty in the morning? Good Lord! I headed out the door and down the porch, not stopping even with the pad-pad-pad of soft footsteps behind me.

"Cloud, wait please!"

Of course I had to stop walking. Of course I had to turn around. Of course I had to be hurt once again deep inside when I saw tears streaking down her face. Of all the sappiest moments in my life...

"Cloud, you've forgotten your promise to me, have you."

"Promise?" _Oops... not the correct answer_.

She gave me a pained look, and increased her sobbing skill. I say _skill_, because she knew she could play on my emotions. "You spiky-headed jerk! How can you leave me and everyone like that?"

"I meant what I said, and I said what I meant."

"No you didn't. I know you didn't."

"Really. How?"

"That night at the well, six years ago. I was looking into the face of an adolescent boy who was dreaming about being a grown man. He wanted to be a SOLDIER just like the Great Sephiroth... and he did. He became a SOLDIER. And as far as I am concerned, you still are. And... you can't back down now. You swore to come save me whenever I was in danger. Like... you'd be my shining knight in armor or something. "

"I remember that, Tifa." I did, in fact, remember it. It was a tranquil, cloudless night in Nibelheim. We were sitting at the well and talking together. Heh, she was my only friend when I was a teen... more like my little sister in a way. And, yeah, I said I'd come and save her sorry butt if ever she was in danger. I don't think I'd be a knight in shining armor... but you'd gotta humor these girls sometimes. "I'm sorry."

"Cloud, please come back with us. I know your side of the story. I know Barret's, too, and I agree: he tends to overdo his plans. Whatever you think of the situation, though, please don't leave me. You're my best friend, Cloud, and it would break my heart for you to up and leave like that. As it is, you already tore it a bit."

"Aw, c'mon, I don't want to be the total bad guy here."  
"Then, come back to us!"

I looked at her, and she looked at me. Her gaze melted me, and I couldn't say no. "Alright, I accept."

"Well, congratulations, then," came the booming voice of old Stubby Arm. "So you'll come with us on our next mission?"

"Yeah... Yeah, I'll come with you."

"Awesome," Barret said. His voice was actually pleasant-sounding, and his eyes were actually soft. "Thanks, Cloud."

"Why the sudden change of heart?"

"Man, you totally rocked with that Materia stuff back in the last one. You're a pretty good melee person, too. And... you are a pretty good friend to have, too."

_Well, now look at that!_ "I never thought I'd hear you say that."

"Well, that makes two of us," he said, smiling. "Join me for a drink before we hit the sack, won't you?"

"Hell yeah. Sounds good."

Tifa squeezed my hand. "Thanks, Cloud."

Golly, I'm such a player.

Another Stolichnaya down, and I was in my bed. At eight in the morning, most everybody was up and milling about. Me? I was snoozing and having the most wonderful, wet dream.


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE**

**I**

It was nine o clock at night when I lit a _Blue Duster_ cigarette and sat at the bar counter watching the same damn news coverage that they showed fourteen damn hours ago. The reactor was gone, the apartment complexes were cleaned up, and the citizens were okay-- it turned out the original catastrophe of the man thought to be paralyzed from the waist down from a flying piece of burning metal turned out to be a false case. Ha, what a kick in the ass that was. I took my eyes away from the screen and focused all my attention to this wonderful, brown stick hanging from my lips. These, folks, are _the_ cigarettes to smoke. People say you can't beat drugs, like marijuana and coke, to give you one hell of a great buzz; pah! just wait to you try one of these _Blue Duster_s. You'll change your mind.

Tifa came over to the counter. She had gone to her room for a pleasant eight-hour nap while her blonde friend, Charlotte, manned the Seventh Heaven. The nicely, tanned barmaid seemed to have gotten as good a rest as I had gotten. I had been in such a good, deep sleep that a fucking nuclear warhead could have gone off and I wouldn't have even turned over. The dark-haired siren in front of me right now was wearing a sexy, low-cut white shirt and skimpy black shorts.

I wonder why she was smiling so big.

"Guess where I'm going today?"

"Hm. You're guess is as good as mine, Tifa."

"Before I say where I'm going... which is an interesting location... tell me where you're going today."

I laughed. Her nonsensical humor was apparant. "You already know where I'm going today."

"Well tell me again. I forgot."

"You forgot. Hm. C'mon now."

"Well?"

"The damn nuclear reactor in Sector Five. Why No. 5, I do not know. Our leader likes to be random, I guess."

"Okay. Who's going with you?"

"The other four, Tifa. C'mon, now, what are you playing at?"

"There's a fifth person going with you, too, SOLDIER boy."

"Who?"

"Me, silly."

_And halt, dammit._ "What?"

"I'm going with you and Barret to the Core Room. The other three are providing defense."

"But why, who's going to manage the bar? And do you know how to fight?"

"Everybody knows how to fight, Cloud." She sighed. "Golly, have you forgotten what I used to do when we were kids in Nibelheim?" Getting no response out of me and frowning at my confused expression she went on, "I was a kung fu black belt when I was seventeen."

"Oh, yeah." I remembered her fascination with martial arts. She was pretty good at it for a girl. The guys were better, though, smoking every competition that came their way. However, she bested a few men now that I recall. As I recall more, she was actually pretty damn good at that homosexual stuff. Me, heh, I didn't need that crap. Fighting was purely my instinct, and fighting was a sort of thing that just came naturally to me. It's a special craft. But... "I remember. Yeah, you were pretty awesome."

She smiled at that.

I had to add, though, "Why are you dressed like that?"

"To make you stare and ask that question."

"Seriously."

"You're not my dad, I can dress however I want."

I didn't say anything. She was giving me a hard-on, so I had to get up and leave. Biggs and Wedge were playing air hockey in the Game room awaiting Jessie as she was preparing the final organization of her pouch contents. Barret was on the opposite end of the bar, talking to his daughter. He had a sad look on his face, no doubt regretting once again to leave his daughter alone in the slums. Business was business, though.

"Well, on to Sector Five, I guess."

"Awfully cheery today, Strife," the black man responded facing me. Marlene waved at me, and I returned the favor.

"Had a pleasant snooze this morning and afternoon."

"Did you now?"

"Always do after a tough night's work."

He smiled, gave his daughter a kiss, and got up. "Is that girl ready, yet?"

Biggs called from the table. "She's doing something with makeup, I think."

"Makeup?"

"I guess she's gotta look pretty for the explosion, boss. You know, you gotta be lookin your best for these things."

"Well tell her ass to hurry up."

The door to the basement suddenly opened up, and Jessie stormed out with a very heavy-laden satchel slung over her left shoulder and a crapload of manilla envelopes stuffed in her arms. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her face was a flustered red.

Tifa looked at her with a curious expression. "What's wrong, girl?"

"Need help?" Biggs asked, tossing his air hockey puck across the table.

She shook her head furiously, went to a table in the bar room, and dropped the mess of envelopes onto the tablecloth. "This mission... complicated..." Her voice was erratic, and I saw Barret raise his eyebrows. She dug into her satchel and pulled out a box. "The bomb's built a little differently this time around. It shouldn't trigger a quick timer interface like the last one did, nor should it alert the reactor's klaxon system like the last one did. Still..."

"Still what?" Barret shouted. "What the fuck's wrong?"

"The bomb will work. I'm just not very organized here."

"I don't care about your organization. Only care about the bomb and its result, is all."

She sighed. "I'm just... tired."

"Well, snap out of it, we gotta go."

She sighed again, heaved the manilla into her arms, ignored our help, and stormed out the door. Wedge hoisted the guitar case holding his sniper rifle and went to the door. He stopped at the door and turned to Barret. His voice was careful when he spoke. "She said this mission seemed complicated. What do you suppose she means by that?"

Barret looked into the direction of where she had departed and shrugged. "Who knows. This might be her time of the month, y'know. People always get cold feet when the big night comes around."

Wedge took that in and then turned and left the bar. Barret followed, muttering something under his breath. My guess would be that it was probably something derrogatory, as usual. Biggs buttoned his denim jacket, and I could see that he had that MP5 gun stuck in his special holster ready to be wielded out like the knife a Japanese sushi chef. He left the bar, and I turned to Tifa. "Ready to go?" I asked.

"Of course, if you are."

"I guess I am."

We left together, Marlene watching us and Charlotte polishing a few of the wine glasses on the shelf. Let the fun begin!

**II**

Since my beautiful rain jacket and my totally awesome sweater were damaged from this morning's fall, I was stuck with having this fruity-looking brown short-sleeve with a set of jeans that seemed a little tight. Those three Materia orbs were with me as well-- I couldn't forget about those. I still hadn't figured out what that white orb was; I couldn't recall if it actually had any relevant use. I only had the sword with me, too. When I awoke, I saw that all my shotgun shells had been used up; I called up the Weapon Shoppe owner since I now had 3000 gil to my name, but the damn fat bastard had sold most of his merchandise away and wasn't getting a new shipment until next fucking Tuesday. Just fucking great.

Whatever.

We boarded the train at about 2315 (11:15 PM for you non-military guys-- military time is still fixated in my brain for some reason). The outside of the train caught my attention, specifically the locks connecting each train cart. The locks seemed old and rusty due to a lack of upkeep, seemingly frail and easily breakable. Of course, everything here in Lower Midgar was practically frail and easily breakable. I wondered, though, if this would mean something in the near future... but only a wise person would suggest bringing that to attention. This particular train had about thirty carts to it, and we were getting on somewhere in the middle. The inside of the tram was pretty much the same as the other train rides. Nice, cushion seats and much better lighting. I faintly heard a nice reggae theme pumping through the ceiling's sound system. New and interesting.

Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie moved on to the next cart to do something. They didn't tell us, yet. Jessie was still being frivolously paniced about something. Barret sat in his usual spot, and Tifa went to check a scene out the window. As the hydraulics system locked the doors and the tram took to a start, I noticed something once again.

The newspaper-laden boy was in the exact same place.

Still smelling bad.

Still not moving.

I couldn't stand it. I bent down and moved his shoulder. Nothing. I put a finger onto his neck and felt not a single sign of life coarsing through his veins. I stood there looking at the poor sonofabitch sitting on the cushioned seat forever with his eyes closed, bathed in a putrid aura. Why, of all things? Why would this stuff happen to a supposedly civilized people? And everybody else that travelled the trains here just accepted it? Shit.

The cart door opened, and Jessie came through. "There are more people on here than last time. Best to take things slowly."

"Good idea," Barret agreed. He moved to a stiff sitting position and played with his machine gun.

Tifa looked at me and motioned with her arm. Something out the window had caught her attention, and I guess it must've been something important. When I was beside her, she was pointing toward the massive plate in the center of the city. Wow... like I never saw that before. "What's up?"

"That plate."

"Uh-huh."

"I wish it wasn't there."

"Well, I wish a lot of things weren't the way they are. But, they are."

Tifa rolled her eyes and softly hit her forehead on the glass window. "No matter what you do, you still retain a pessimistic attitude towards people and things."

"Well... what's to be optimistic with the way this Planet is being controlled? I mean, everything is in a corrupt state of affairs. What's to be happy about that?"

She seemed to be thinking about a response. Her eyes grew heavy as she said, "Sometimes, being content with what you got makes the optimism for living in this pigsty that much better."

_Hmm... let's press the issue some more_. "What's to be content with around here?"

She looked at me, and it was one of those puzzling looks that women often give men so that the men cannot figure out for the life of them what that woman is thinking. Such was the way here. I think she was trying to burn me with her eyes. She finally cleared her throat and said, "If I read Jessie's documents correctly, we should be approaching the first security checkpoint in about nine minutes."

"Get ready for hell."

"Why?"

"That's what it sounds like."

No sooner had the words escaped my mouth, the fucking alarms exploded into life and the lighting degraded to that shocking red color.

Yet... it did not cease!

Barret immediately jumped up and cracked his fist against the train's walls. "Hey, hey! What the hell? What the hell is going on here?"

Biggs popped his head through the door. "Bad news, boss."

"The fuck you mean by that?"

The conductor of the train answered his inquiry. The intercom system buzzed to life, and the train conductor's voice bellowed out. He sounded like he was talking under water. "Citizens, please do not be alarmed. President Shinra's ID security checkpoints have picked up some unidentified passengers in the train. Their locations have yet to be determined. For your safety and mine, a Lock-down situation is commencing as we speak. In less than a minute, all accessways are to be locked; the train will stop, and I and my staff of security guards will personally check each passenger's ticket and ID cards. I am terribly sorry for the inconvience. Lock-Down commences in thirty seconds."

Barret's eyes widened to their fullest, and he sent his hand into a fist and crushed the chair he was just sitting on. The force of the blow ripped a hole in the nice cushion. He pointed a finger at Biggs. "I don't know how, and I don't know why. But we'll find out later. Tell the other two to blow a hole in their cart and jump through it. You copy that?"

Biggs took a step back in shock, nodded slowly, and then left.

"Wait a minute--" I shouted.

"--you're going to blow a hole in this train!" Tifa finished.

"Stand back, children!" Barret shouted above the din of the alarms. He tweaked a knob on his gunarm, and the muzzle shifted form to a large black hole. He reached into his vest pocket and pulled a small grey ball and stuffed it into the muzzle. Aiming at the wall to the north of him, he fired.

The train lurched on the tracks, temporarily losing grip. The alarms ceased their noise, and a dismal echo subsided as the north-eastern wall of the cart fell apart. The conductor immediately braked the train, and the slow grinding of the wheels pierced our ears. Seconds later, a second blast rocked the train several carts down from us; this time, the train got disconnected. Six of the carts nearer to the cabousse lost their grip on the rails and toppled into the wall of the subway, breaking apart in a mesh of loose electrical wires and a ton of glass. Our cart and the surviving ones jostled inconsistently on the railings and threatened to topple over as well. Barret didn't say anything as he made his way over to the hole, peer through it, and then jumped out.

"Fuck!" Tifa shouted. "I don't want to start the mission like this."

"Bear through it, girl. This is getting exciting!" C'mon, those deafening alarms were gone, there was explosions, our deaths were on the line... what couldn't be more fun! I guided her over to the hole and placed her in front of me.

She held on to the broken sides looking at the moving ground uneasily. "Please don't push me."

"Not gonna happen, girl." I pushed her and she hit the ground feet first, and then she fell on her side and bounced over and over down the tunnel. I stood there for a minute, breathing in the air, and then I leapt.

I actually landed on my butt and bounced forward and did a few somersaults that way until I crashed into the opposite wall of the subway tunnel. The train continued to slow to a halt on down the tunnel, tremendous sparks flying everywhere out the back end. It past the derailed carts and finally halted several hundred yards away from where I landed. The fireworks display died down, and the electrical wiring inside the train short-circuited plummeting the no-doubt frightened passengers into a dismal blackness. I could hear petrified gasps and shrieks of terror escalate out of the broken windows. The carts that had derailed seemed to be in an even more dismal situation. I think someone had been impaled on a broken shard of glass, from what I gathered from the mix-match bag of yells going on in there.

Congratulations, B.W.

A ways to my right, I saw him approaching Tifa and then helping her to her feet. They came over as I stood up and brushed the dust from my clothes. All three of us had a few bruises lining our bodies, but none of us were severely hurt. Tifa had a flabbergasted expression on her face, and Barret had some sort of expression on his ... y'know, the typical Barret face.

The subway tunnel was back to its drab color and empty meaning. The only difference was a smashed-up locomotive. I'm pretty sure the authorities were already swarming onto the scene. "I guess this fucks up the mission, eh?"

"Why was that checkpoint moved?" Tifa asked. "And don't we have fake IDs?"

"Guys," Barret said, lacking calmness, "don't jump to any such conclusions as that. Jessie'll explain it to us."

"Well, wait a minute," Tifa said, anger coming through. "How are we supposed to know that the rest of the mission's not all jacked up?"

"Hey," I said, "it's going along quite smoothly to me."

"Shut up, Cloud," both of them said at once.

_Damn. Talk about a tampon problem_.

"Look," Barret said, "I know as much as you two do about what's going on here. Jessie didn't tell me anything about faulty situations as these, okay. Right now, we've got to follow some of our patented gut instincts on this, okay?" He took a look around him. "Yes, yes I know where we are, too. Below this tunnel is a large shaft that interlocks through all eight reactors... seven now that Reactor 1 is gone. The shaft is sort of like the plate for the city. The shaft keeps all the reactors supported and aligned right."

"Supported and aligned right?" Tifa asked

"Hey, I'm a fighter, not an engineer. Talk to the other three, they know more about that shit than I do."

"So, this shaft will lead us to Reactor No. 5?"

"Yes, we're actually quite close to No. 5 right now."

"How?"

"Look at the scrawl up there."

We looked over at the wall and saw a protruding billboard that read: EGRESS-06-05WZXG05.

Barret explained, "The first part talks about the subway tunnel. As of now, our train was going through Sector Six on into Sector Five. The 'WZXG' stuff says that the shaft below us will lead the way into the Sector Five reactor."

She raised up her eyebrow. "Are you making that shit up?"

"No, woman, I'm being serious! Let's hurry up and look for a ventilation opening."

"Now, what are you talking about?"

"There should be a grated opening somewhere along this here wall." He searched for a couple minutes along the wall, his eyes roaming up and down and side to side. Finally, he seemed to have found what he wanted. "Look over there; there it is."

While she followed his pointed finger, I took a look back at the wrecked trains. The conductor and some of the other passengers had scrambled out of some smashed windows. Most of them were bleeding profusely, and some were passed out on the subway floor. The conductor looked alright, and he was busy checking each of them over to see if any were on the verge of death. Faint cries were echoing all over the place, and the most shrill cries were coming from the derailed section. Now, that I looked over there, I immediately regretted doing so. We already had one casualty: an elderly man hanging out the open end of the cart with a thick shard of metal impaled through his head. His wife was there beside him, crying.

I snapped my fingers at the other two and said, "Look at that. Look what we just done!"

"Cloud," Barret responded, "I can't save everybody."

I gritted my teeth. "We need to get out of here, now."

We ran to the where Barret found the shaft's opening; as he bent to open the grated seal, we heard a shout. I looked and saw that the conductor and some of the passengers were taking out pistols and running toward our position. Goddamit, I guess you can't save everybody in a cruel world such as this... people will always fight other people. "Hey, cool it with what you're doing. Take care of those shits, and I'll open that seal."

"Why?"

"Cuz, you got the gun." I pushed him aside, took out my sword, and pierced the blade through the vents.

The conductor fired the first shot and barely missed Tifa's head. The bullet hit a few feet above mine. Barret posed as a barrier for us, switched his gunarm to its regular status, sighed to himself, and unloaded on the sorry civilians. The conductor fell backwards, blood pouring out his face, neck, and chest. The passengers behind him were succumbed in the same manner. Screams of terror now fused the other civilians, and many yelled beastly things in our direction. My blade cut a good-sized hole, and the vents collapsed to the ground. Tifa brushed in front of me and went in first. I followed her, and Barret came after killing the last armed civilian in the process.

He had a tear building up in his eye as he followed us through the winding ventilation shaft. Tifa's cheeks were streamed thick. I wasn't crying, but I admit I didn't feel good, either. I felt like I had just lost a brother, it hurt that much. The ventilation shaft was a lenghty jaunt and very tight. Tifa's thin body made her journey a smooth one. It was just passable for me, but Barret had to take it slow so he didn't get stuck in the corners. He heaved himself along after me, and when Tifa called out saying she saw the exit I heard him breathe a sigh of relief. Tifa balled her hand into a fist and drove it into the vents, denting it hard. She hit it a second and a third time. On the fourth it gave, and the vents dropped to the floor. She got out and caressed her hand. I helped Barret out, and we all sat on the deck and did not talk.

We sat there for a long while, the silence maddening and in every way imaginable... awkward. Tifa silently cried and did not bother to wipe her face. Barret just looked at his boot and clenched and unclenched his only hand. He looked at his gunarm a couple of times and then back at his boot. I stared at the both of them, first at one then at the other. I checked our surroundings and noticed that we were in somewhat of a safe haven, which was good of course. We were in some sort of a warehouse. A spacious interior with a dimly lit ceiling. Through this pitiful light, I could see that there were several massive shelves of brown boxes. Lots of brown boxes. Some were labelled, and others were not. This area had a peculiar smell that was neither good nor unpleasant; it was just a dry smell, devoid of source. Whatever the smell, there was obviously no other beings in here besides us, which of course was a good thing.

I looked back at the other two and saw the same looks on their faces. An unexpected anger flowed through me, and I got up. "Damn."

They looked at me.

"I'm sorry, alright. Goddamn, I'm sorry. No civilian should have to suffer from our work. Alright? I'm sorry. Yet, we can't be a sappy, melodramatic group here. So let's haul up and continue on."

"You didn't shoot them," Barret said.

I bit my lip. These knuckleheads. "I told you to do it, because I didn't have the capability to do it. They would've killed us if you didn't get them first. They had fired upon us!"

Before he could respond, my eyes flared up and I added, "I've killed before!"

"Huh?" he asked astonished. Tifa looked at me in shock.

"The military made 'accidental' collatoral damages. I had the unfortunate 'opportunity'... to partake in them. Do you think I wanted to? Fuck no! But you take the tortue and you live with it." I stared at them, and they stared back. "I'll leave you two here if you don't fucking get up this minute."

They stayed there for a few seconds. Tifa got up first and wiped her face. "It's not something you see everyday."

I took my sleeve and helped her dry her face. Barret got up and sighed. He formed his train of thought and then spoke, "They didn't die in vain, I know that."

"Then let us hurry."

"What about Jessie, Biggs, and--" Tifa asked.

"I'm sure they're alright," I told her. _Of course they're alright_. "They can get out of anything."

Her smile came back again.

I took another look around. This room was an unfamiliar territory; for the life of me, I don't know how Barret knew of this place. The air was starting to irritate me; I now realized it was too damn stuffy in here. I took another _Blue Duster_ out, wanting desperately for a good taste of something. "Anybody want one?"

"Nah, I'm good," Barret said. "This place should be an easy jaunt."

The billow of smoke that escaped my mouth was a pleasant moment. "Easy navigation?"

"Yeah. There should be a ladder leading downwards into the heart of the reactor somewhere in the back."

"Leading into the heart of the reactor?"

"Yeah, the blueprint I read earlier gives us quite a lucky break."

"Excellent." _So was this cigarette_.

"This air is getting to me now," Tifa complained. She screwed up her nose. "That cig doesn't help, either."

"Whatever. C'mon let's go."

I had the sword brandished in front of me, ready for anything. This mission was a totally different journey than the last one. Hopefully, the other six would be just as surprising when we got to them. Repetitive, of course. Blowing up eight reactors would probably get extremely tiresome by the last one, and I'm sure Shinra probably'd get a little antsy by that time. Barret followed on my right, cocking his gunarm every corner we passed. Tifa brought up the rear waving the billows of smoke away from her face and cringing at the various heaps of cobwebs strewn along the boxes and shelves. Massive cobwebs, some with their fat owners, lay everywhere in this place! Cobweb city, I tell you. I thankfully never experienced arachnophobia. If I did, Barret and Tifa would probably see me passed out and puking all over myself. Thankfully, that's not going to happen.

The one-armed man was right. There was a ladder in the back leading down to a warm atmosphere. A blue light was glowing up from the hole. We peered through and saw that the ladder extended a long ways down. That damn vertigo feeling hit me a little again. Screw arachnophobia, bring on _acro_phobia.

"Behold," Barret said, splendidly. "Mako Reactor No. Five!"

**III**

It took twenty minutes for all three of us to scale down the ladder. The rails were cold and slimy, stringed with age-old mildew and God-knew-what-else. The air had also gone from warm to cold for some strange reason. My nipples were poking out of this fruity old brown shirt, and that didn't feel very good.

The room we arrived in was the Core Room. We were on a platform jettisoned high above the great acid pit, the leftover wastes of the reactor's juices. The same old concoction. The same old result. The island lay in the center with a crosswalk protruding towards a raised platform opposite the one we were on. Contrary to Reactor One, a second crosswalk connected the island to our platform. Accessway to the reactor's warehouse, I imagined. Steam rolled listlessly from the acidic goo and snaked upwards to the open ceiling. The steam felt comfortable in a sick sense; it helped fight the cold feeling that filled this domain so intricately. I looked above at the night sky. The Moon was coming in all Her glory, nearly full. Her light shone through and illuminated the vast mainframe of the Core Room, where our illustrious bomb would inevitably destroy it in one foul swoop.

Wait a second...

"Hey," I cried, the realization hitting me like a big old honkin 18-wheeler, "where the fuck's that bomb?"

Barret looked like someone had just slapped him across the face. "Oh, no."

"You don't have it?" Tifa gasped.

"It's not still on the train, is it?" I asked. This was _shit._

"Well, that problem happened, I blew the train up, and--- -- Jessie has it!"  
"You're blamin this on Jessie?"

"Why not? She had it last."

"But you're supposed to have it."

"Things are different now!"  
"That's fucked up."

"So are you. I don't have the goddamn bomb!"

I slammed my fist on the platform's railing. "Well, of all the things--"

A noise interrupted us, and a piece of metal fell off the wall and onto the floor. Biggs poked his head out of the hole. Eh? "Man, you guys are so damn loud," he laughed. He had something in his hands, as he crawled out.

"Biggs!" Tifa cried .

"Where did you come from?" Barret shouted.

Biggs showed us a box and opened it. Inside was the new, improvised C4 explosive, unharmed. "The mission's still okay."

"What do you mean? Where did you come from?" Barret repeated.

As I took the explosive, the bandana freak replied, "The other two are inside the Lobby Room upstairs. Heh, it's... it's a long story. She'll tell you more later. Suffice it to say, after we rocked off the train we made it here safely. Some of the civilians were a bit agitated."

"Are you alright?"

Biggs sighed. "I guess. Not much I can say on that matter. I must also remark: rumor has it that something big is happening in Shinra Corp. I'm not sure what."

"Is it going to hamper the mission?"

"Not sure. Just be quick here, and meet us up there."

"Gotcha."

Biggs jumped down to the crosswalk and made his way to the opposite platform. Barret motioned for us to go, and we walked on down the crosswalk-- bomb in tow. My stomach felt like ice, as I treaded the walk; I kept my eyes on the prize and made the island, gripping the bomb tightly.

"Sure hope no damn scorpion attacks us here," Barret said.

I laughed. No damn tails around here this time, thank God.

Tifa shrugged her shoulders and said nothing.

I bent down to the base of the mainframe, took the yellow spiral cord protruding from the side of the C4, and prepared to attach it to the structure. A white light obstructed my vision. It was brief, and I stopped what I was doing. A second later, it happened again. Again brief. I shook my head.

"What's wrong?" Tifa asked.

Immense pain struck my brain, and I reeled backwards and fell on my back. Barret, Tifa, and the reactor disappeared. My eyes saw a different reactor colored in red. An ear-splitting whistle blew shrilly on and on and on. Warm air scorched my skin, and a sinister laugh accompianed the shrill whistle.

Then it died, and I found myself lying on my stomach on a thin piece of railing looking straight at Tifa Lockheart bending over an old man. She was crying.

She suddenly splurged out in sorrow, "NO!"

_What in the world_?

"WHY!" she shrieked. "Papa, please answer me!"

Her dad.

That was her dad.

He was dead.

_Who_?

"Sephiroth did this to you, didn't he?" she said. She was talking to herself. "He DID this to you! Sephiroth, Shinra, SOLDIER. I HATE THEM ALL!"

She didn't notice me. She didn't know I was here. I tried to speak, tried to reach my arm to her. Her face, her beautiful face was terrible, it was so sad, painful to look at. But I couldn't. I couldn't move, couldn't do a goddamn thing.

She still didn't notice me as she stood up, bent over, picked up the most monumental sword I had ever seen, and then left up a flight of stairs into a dark room.

Mako Reactor No. Five came back into view, and I found myself sitting up. Tifa was rubbing my shoulders. "Cloud!" she cried impatiently. "Are you alright?"

I worked my mouth-- it had gone numb and dry. "Tifa?"

"What?"

That memory. What was that about? So vivid. So... "Nothing. I was just... just remembering something."

"What?"

"Enough!" Barret yelled, ruining the moment. "Get your lazy SOLDIER ass up, fool, and work that bitch!"

"Stupid fucker," I said under my breath. She pinched me as I propped myself off of her and went back to work. I laced up the bomb without another memory interruption and was relieved of the absence of a klaxon cacophony. There was a timer, though. However, it showed a twenty minute countdown.

"Twenty."

"More than enough time," Barret said.

"You said that the last time."

"Last time was ten. This time it's twice as much."

I sighed and stood up.

"You gonna have anymore unnecessary lapses like that again, spiky?"

"Hopefully not."

Barret proceeded across the second crosswalk, but Tifa glanced at me first before following. She seemed to be concerned, as if she herself knew what I had just experienced in those few split seconds of memory.

**IV**

The Lobby Room greeted us with the same friendly atmosphere as the first Mako reactor; plush sofas, vending machines, and televisions lined the room in one cozy-looking state of being. It was noticeably warmer in here, judging by the thermostat hanging on the wall. An annex to the room opened on the left, and at the end of the hallway the other three cohorts were sitting on a sofa by a door. Jessie looked perplexed, and Wedge looked irritated. They must've had a fight.

Before we even got near them, she stood up and shouted, "It was my fault!"

"Well, I think we knew that," Barret patronized.

"It was the ID cards that I was worried about back at the bar. I should've told you what was on the Internet news broadcast. See, after we killed the first one, Shinra immediately enacted a sort of Plan B on the security checkpoints. He unlocked a certain code in the ID cards that would ferret out the fake cards in no time at all."

"How could we have bypassed that?"

"At this present time, we couldn't have."

"That's not the answer I was looking for."

"It's the only answer _we_ have," she said. A few tears were coming into her eyes.

"At least all six of us are okay," I chirped up. "Look at the bright side, fellas."

Tifa looked at me funny. "Optimistic for once?"

"Possibly."

A loud sound came from behind the door. Like metal grinding against metal. I twirled my sword out in front of me and reached for the doorknob.

"Wait," Barret said, "you know what you're doing?"

"No," I said. I jostled the knob and opened the door. A vast hollow room greeted us. A razor thin crosswalk connected our platform to another way, way off in the distance. Like the Core Room, there was no ceiling, and the Moon shone through to greet us again. Unlike the Core Room, there was no floor. The slums were our floor. We were suspended possibly _sixty_ stories above the Sector Five slums!

The girls gasped. The three guys looked on in shock, and I lost focus. Acrophobia hit me hard, and I gripped the platform's railing in a white-knuckle grip. Those were the slums down there! Way down there. Why were we suspended above them?

"Cloud," Tifa said suddenly. She gripped my shoulder. "Cloud, are you alright?"

I shook my head.

"First needles, now heights?" Barret asked.

"Hey, that's not funny. He might fall off the crosswalk," Biggs said.

"I didn't mean that as a joke," the gunarm man replied.

Tifa supported me as we stepped foot on the crosswalk. Boy, did that floor feel like jello. The walls were moving, too!

"It'll be just a couple of minutes," she whispered in my ear.

A couple of minutes too damn long, I say!

All six of us made it to the middle of the crosswalk in some way or another. The width of the walk was so short that even the thin girls had trouble keeping their balance on it. I could only imagine how Barret was doing. The railings that the crosswalk had were extremely frail; a few broke in places where our hands touched. What kind of sick-ass engineer would build a crosswalk like this? I concentrated on my inner peril. Sound had slowed down, and my vision was faltering. I needed off of this damn piece of plywood!

Unfortunately, my eyes dimly caught sight of an unpleasant figure.

I was the first of Avalanche to lay eyes on His Prestigious Host, the Valuable President John Shinra of the city of Midgar. Shinra stood on the platform we were trying to get to; his hands were gripping the railing, and he looked at us with a mixture of interest and disgust. His flamboyant red suit must've been an extra, extra large to accomodate all of his girth. His jowl-laden face looked like a fucking pug's. He also had about ten rings on his left hand and another fifteen on his right. He was such a fucking pig.

"So," he said through his usual trite nasal voice, "_this_ is Avalanche."

Barret almost lost his footing, as anger flared in his eyes. He lifted his bulky gunarm to end the life of the fat bitch, but I surprised even myself by stopping him. Barret turned his angry eyes on me. "The fuck you doing?"

"This isn't the best time. He's got something up his sleeves."

Barret chewed on that and kept his gunarm down... for the moment. I turned back towards the President and asked, "Remember me?"

"Eh?"

Tifa supported me, as I shifted my feet. "I said, do you remember me?"

"Somewhat. You've got a glow in your eyes."

_Ah, yes. The glow_. I forgot I still had that tell-tale mark. "Yes, Shinra. The mark of SOLDIER."

He raised an eyebrow. "A candidate of SOLDIER, are you? I don't recall--- Oh wait. Yeah, I remember you. That ugly-ass spiky hair. That gay posture. You're Cloud Strife from Nibelheim."

I bowed my head. _Gay_ posture?

He continued, "I can't believe I forgot a traitor such as you. Joining this motley piece of crap right here. Bombing my beautiful reactors--"

"They're not beautiful, you piece of shit!" Barret yelled. "You're killing this beloved city, you fucking dirtbag!" His gunarm was menacingly waving around.

Shinra sighed and scratched his head. "You all bore me. I've got a dinner to catch to with a Mideel supermodel." He snapped his fingers behind him, and that same metal against metal sound occurred. It was an intense sound. "Just so you know," he added with a smirk, "your bomb timer is about five minutes and counting as of now. Hope you're a quick bunch."

"What is that?" I asked. A huge metal man was walking stiffly out of the open door behind the President. It was twice the width of the President (which seemed an unusual thing to imagine) and about three heads taller than him. It had a bazooka on its back and M16s attached to both of its arms. Its face resembled that of a man's, but it was a little crude.

"This," Shinra explained, "is Professor Hojo's latest creation, AirBuster. After you destroyed his beautiful metal scorpion yesterday, he slaved away the finishing touches on this duke. I'm pretty sure that this robot will delight in mushing all six of you to a bloody pulp. Happy eatings!"

A new noise came from below us, and a helicopter appeared. It hovered nearer to Shinra, and he grabbed the extended rope ladder. He left the platform with a childish glee in his eye and a wave of his hand. The helicopter buzzed on up into the sky, all the way up to the ritzy, glitzy Upper Midgar for some damn fornification party. That piece of shit!

"Cloud," Tifa said in my ear.

"What?"

"Look."

I looked and saw that the metal man was doing something with his back. Biggs realized first and pulled out his MP5. He ran down the crosswalk and sprayed bullets all over the torso of AirBuster, halting the metal monster's intended rocket launcher attack. Barret shoved past us and joined the little fight. His M60 rang up and down the metal body, blasting pieces of metal off its hide.

I noticed the platform that the monster was standing on was a pretty-good sized arena. I pushed all thoughts of vertigo out of my head and pulled out my little Lightning orb. I looked at Tifa. "You ever seen these before?"

Her eyes widened. "Is that Materia?"

"Yeah, this ones casts bolt spells. Use it." I handed it to her and saw her react to the fearsome power flowing within that crystal.

"Wow," she whispered.

"Use it," I cried. Acrophobia tore at my body, as I stumbled across the crosswalk. My sword hung like a wet fish in my hand, bobbing every which way. Wedge and Jessie had joined the other two with a set of pistols in their hands. AirBuster seemed confused and wary of six people attacking it on a small platform. It had some pretty decent firepower, but I think Hojo forgot to add some artificial intelligence to the creature's head. When I finally stumbled onto the platform, I was relieved to find that the ground was released of the jello effect. I took my sword and plunged it into the stomach of the metal beast. I grabbed the hilt with both hands and ripped the blade out, sending metal chunks flying out the creature's side. AirBuster gave a garbled cry. Biggs and Barret were loading new clips into their guns, and Wedge and Jessie contiued firing single shots into the creature's back.

Then, I saw that AirBuster's metal eyes seemed to suggest a sense of anger. I'm not sure if robots yet were able to express strong feelings as that, but it sure looked like that to me. A new weapon popped out of its head; it looked like a thin cannon. It lowered its arms and shot a purple ball into the air from the cannon. The purple ball slided down to the floor and blew a magnificent hole in the platform. The blast tore a gash in Wedge's leg and sent him flying into Jessie. Both of them dropped their pistols and fell through the open doorway, Wedge's blood spraying the wall. Barret received eight shrapnel wounds across his chest, and his body flung into the platform's railing denting the frame and threatening it to collapse. The shock of the blast dropped me to the ground but left me free of injury. AirBuster followed up the attack with dual sprays of its M16 arms, successfully clipping Biggs's back, shoulder, and one bullet in his stomach. The bandana man genuflected to the floor and cried out in pain. AirBuster's weapons aimed towards me and fired; I blocked the little bullets with my sword. The massive bulk of the sword was four feet in length and three feet in width, a complex and magnificent piece of weapon that only I could handle properly. The little bullets fell limply to the ground, failing to penetrate through the thick steel. AirBuster stopped firing and seemed prepared to fire another purple ball in my direction-- one that I couldn't avoid!

Then, Tifa gave a cry and spread her arms. A yellow glow emanated off her skin, and all of us looked as a white, jagged bolt of lightning birthed from her chest and impaled the metal man's torso. The bolt of lightning formed baby bolts of lightning and fried circuit after circuit of AirBuster's innards. Smoke and steam came out of its vents, and the creature bent backwards and forwards and side to side. The spell died, and the creature stood limply where it was. Yet, still alive. I gritted my teeth and focused all my energy to my sword. A manuever I saw a man do one time came back to memory. A manuever so masterfully brilliant. I remembered it, then looked at AirBuster gleefully. It watched me, as I ran to it and leapt up in the air. Before it could react, I had uppercutted it from the stomach up. Suspended in the air, I tilted the sword up over my head and then forced it down. The blade's force was that of a speeding locomotive, and it tore the deepest gash straight down the middle of its body.

AirBuster was defeated.

It stood there, though, not moving. Barret, Tifa, and I looked at it, and it still did not move. Then, it lifted its head once and a mechanical whine came out of its face. Electrical sparks raced up and down its frame, and it blew up. The explosion created a massive hole in the frame leaving Tifa and Barret on one side and me on the other.

Except I was hanging from the torn edge of the crosswalk!

The force of the blast had knocked me into the air and torn the crosswalk and platform apart. I was flying in the air with a not single grip on anything. My hands flailed everywhere and finally came in contact with a red pipe protruding out the destroyed end of the crosswalk. I stupidly looked down and saw the slums waving at me below. All them crusty old buildings were my tombstone, my fucking grave! I looked back up and felt an urge to vomit. I saw Tifa's face, a face of shock. Barret came behind her and pulled at her shoulders.

"Tifa, please. There's nothing we can do!"

"We can't just leave him!"

Barret couldn't respond. He looked at me, and it was the most honestly frightened expression I had ever seen on him. He looked like he was about to lose a best friend or something. Tifa was crying now. "Cloud! You can't die. There's so much I want to tell you!"

So much she wanted to tell me.

"You can't die!" she yelled.

"Tifa, be strong. This story's not over yet." I looked at Barret. "Take care of her for me."

He gave me a thumbs up. A loud noise erupted somewhere in the distance, and a great warm feeling arose in the air. Barret's eyes widened, and he picked up Tifa onto his back, ignored his bleeding wounds, and stiffly ran out the open door. The bomb had gone off, and I could see the fire already spreading. It came like a gale, and the pipe I was hanging from dislodged.

I fell. The vertigo sense consumed me, and I found myself in a silly spiral twirling downwards and downwards like a toilet effect. Above me the Reactor No Five was exploding in a magnificent spectacle, fire ripping its metal walls with a tenacity I had never seen before. Below me, the slums were racing to catch me with open arms. All their decripite glory was rushing forth to give me good praise. I thought I saw a tall church come into view, and I smiled. It would be interesting to die in a church. That never really happened before. I never really thought about dying before either, and definitely not like this.

So much she wanted to tell me.

I blacked out before the church's roof made contact with my body.


End file.
